Marsh Lane & Whitacre Heath

Usual Sunday visit to Marsh Lane was pretty poor today, no new ticks and a count that was struggling to  reach even 30! So after an hour and a half we gave up and headed for Whitacre Heath for a chance of the Kingfishers.

The minute we arived at the Main pool hide we knew the Kingfisher was going to be a no show, as the main pool was no longer a pool! Its now just a dry mud field with some reeds sticking out of it!

Ok we thought, lets go and see if the stilt hide over looking the scrape is the same -

A tiny bit of water still remains, but its not gonna last for long!

We sat for a couple of hours wondering if the Kingfisher would put an appearance in, but he did'nt :-(
So we killed the boredom with some Common Whitethroat and Blue Tit shots..

Marsh Lane produces a new 1

Finally the Sunday afternoon visit to Marsh Lane gave a new Life Tick with good views of a Hobby, sadly though the piccys i managed were crap due to me having the camera setup completely wrong aperture wise! Every shot was so dark that i could "JUST" make out what i was looking at with no chance of salvage through editing the RAW file either. GUTTED!!

So, yet another looooong distance shot of a Sedge Warbler -

&, a reasonable'ish shot of a Shelduck -

The count -

1. Black-headed Gull
2. Little Grebe
3. Lapwing
4. Coot
5. Starling
6. Grey Heron
7. Stockdove
8. Common Tern
9. Mallard
10. Greylag Goose
11. Wood Pigeon
12. Pochard
13. Tufted Duck
14. Canada Goose
15. Moorhen
16. Oystercatcher
17. Redshank
18. Pied Wagtail
19. Hobby - NEW
20. Great Crested Grebe
21. Little Ringed Plover
22. Cormorant
23. Reed Bunting
24. Teal
25. Shelduck
26. Sedge Warbler
27. Lesser Black-backed Gull
28. Crow
29. Chaffinch
30. Great Tit
31. Blue Tit
32. Greenfinch
33. Blackbird
34. Pheasant
35. Robin
36. Bullfinch
37. Magpie
38. Green Woodpecker
39. Mute swan
40. Black Swan