Dip Purple

No smoke on the water at Rutland Water today and sadly no Purple Heron next to it either. My brother had called expressing an interest in catching up with the long staying juvenile so we set off after work to have a gander.

We gave its favoured area around Burley Fishponds a good grilling  but sadly failed to see it, two other observers appeared to have the same idea but seemed to be having the same sort of luck. A family party of Yellow Wagtails was nice to see while on one of the bunds there was an adult Yellow-legged Gull and a couple of Egyptian Geese. Knowing that there was an unseasonal Great Northern Diver present in the north arm we put the search to one side for a bit and headed off to the point.

Record shot of Yellow-legged Gull.

Searching through numerous eclipse ducks is not one of my birding highlights but I did at least find a female Red Crested Pochard amongst them so it wasn't a waste of time. We managed to find the Great Northern Diver too and how nice it was to see one while wearing T-shirts when normally we're wrapped up like eskimos. Another adult Yellow-legged Gull was found and I managed some distant record shots but by then we had decided to have another peek for the heron.

A slightly worse picture of the Yellow-legged Gull.

One of the other watchers had now joined us and she had bought some gripping news, the heron had showed several minutes ago. The bad news unfortunately was that it had flown out of cover, spiralled upwards and then drifted off to the south, perhaps its long sojourn is finally over. Disappointing though this news was it was still an enjoyable hours birding and worth the trip.