Nene Valley Travels

Alan Shorrock and I visited a couple of sites in the Nene Valley beginning at Summer Leys. With the overnight rain having moved on we were left to enjoy clear though blustery conditions and light conditions were for the most part excellent.

Gadwall and Wigeon.

Although we checked the main lake several times the redhead Smew that has been in residence here for a while eluded us. Better luck met with our efforts to find the drake Red Crested Pochard which showed well though quite distantly from the screen hide. There were no other surprises amongst the wildfowl though a reasonable selection of the commoner species were on view.

Shoveller and Coot.

Now well established as uncommon winter visitors along the Nene Great White Egrets no longer raise eyebrows though they are still an elegant and attractive species. We were lucky enough to see two on our walk around one of which was over Pete Wild's Lake. Other birds of note were a Raven, Cetti's Warbler and at least one Buzzard.

Red Crested Pochard with Wigeon and Great White Egret.

From here we moved on to Stanwick Lakes, a sighting of four egrets feeding with cows seen from the car as we travelled along the A45 were certainly intriguing. Having parked the car we set off to see if we could find them again. While it took a bit of time we did eventually find the cows and some attendant egrets. Our problem was that the birds were distant and often out of view, a total of eight were present in the field. We were both reasonably sure that at least one Cattle was present but most of them were Littles. As we couldn't be a hundred percent sure given the distance and brevity of views it might be best to write this up as a possible Cattle Egret rather than a confirmed one. Luckily the identification of a further two Great Whites was much more straightforward.

Stanwick Lakes.

Other birds noted on our visit included two Egyptian Geese, a Raven, one or two Cetti's Warbler and Snipe.