Eyebrook Again

 A first effort to shift some of those Christmas calories today with a walk around Eyebrook Reservoir. Conditions have stayed fairly similar for the past few days so it was no surprise to be greeted by grey skies with the occasional light drizzle and an increasing amount of mist. Thankfully although the weather was dull the birding turned out to be OK and I enjoyed a good session.

Smews

My lift dropped me off in Stoke Dry car park from where a large selection of ducks were on view. Water levels remain low here which has seen an increase in the numbers of dabbling ducks. Both Shovellers and Pintails were present in good quantities with at least forty of the latter showing around the reservoir. Normally these graceful birds would win any ducky beauty contest but the presence of seven drake Smew outshone them a little. Eyebrook continues to be an excellent site for this species and the striking drakes were joined by at least four redheads. Searching through the abundant wildfowl did not result in any sightings of Scaup but I did find a drake Red Crested Pochard, the female showed a little later on.

Pintails and Goosander

My journey continued towards the sharp end where the large expanse of mud had drawn in a good  number of Lapwings. Feeding in amongst them were twenty six Dunlins, it will be interesting to see if the flock grows in the next couple of months. I continued my walk along the Leicestershire side of the res scoping the opposite bank as I went along. An adult Whooper Swan was associating with a group of Mutes and may be the bird that has  been showing off and on for a month or so. Next to show was a Redshank at the island while looking back up the res from this point produced a sighting of a drake Goosander. By now the fog was getting thicker and visibility began to suffer accordingly and so I made my way towards the spot from where I was being picked up. My final sighting of note was of a small group of Tree Sparrows on the feeders provided by the local wildlife group.