Boxing Day dawned bright and sunny and with Christmas calories to work off I knew that I had to get out. I decided to join up with Shozzer and pay a call on Blatherwycke Lake, the lure of seeing the Black-necked Grebe in better light and the chance of catching up with the reported dozen White-fronted Geese from Christmas Eve being reason enough.
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| Black-necked Grebe |
On the way we stopped off at Deene Lake to check whether any decent geese might be hanging around, the county has enjoyed an influx of White-fronts and several Tundra Beans in the last couple of days. A large flock of Greylags near the monument were thoroughly checked without result and we moved on to give the lake itself the once over. Seven Shelduck have arrived and numbers will probably build over the winter. Other duck numbers have risen too and ten plus Shoveller were the pick of the wild birds, two Black Swans also being present. Brief views of a Kingfisher and a singing Cetti's Warbler, only my second site record, were the pick of the others though we did hear Siskins too. Relatively content with our haul we chose to move on to Blatherwycke Lake.
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| White-fronted Geese |
Having arrived we decided to walk past the church and continue on the public footpath towards the lake. From the south eastern corner I managed to pick out several White-fronted Geese among the Greylag hordes and between us we counted twelve. It took a while but patience and quite a lot of scope squinting finally produced views of the Black-necked Grebe which came fairly close at times and I enjoyed seeing it in much better light conditions. Eventually the grebe drifted off towards the dam and I decided to have another look at the geese. A scan along the shoreline produced a sighting of a Tundra Bean Goose on the water's edge. I alerted Alan and we had some good if distant views of this very scarce visitor before it swam off in the company of two Greylags and was lost to view. Mr Shorrock alerted the wider birding community and we headed back to the car.
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| Distant Tundra Bean Goose... |
Our plan was to check the lake from the King's Cliffe road and hopefully re-find the Tundra. Phil Rogers and Cheryl joined us and we found an additional two White-fronted Geese grazing on the bank near Home Farm and also a drake Goosander on the lake. We continued our walk along the road continually stopping to check any geese and our efforts did eventually pay dividends. The Tundra showed on the bank next to where the the channel between the east and west sides of the lake opens and gave some good views. We watched it for a while before moving on and had a further though more distant sighting of the Black-necked Grebe. Such a day of course requires celebration and the good people at the Samuel Lloyd were only too happy to help us out!
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| ...slightly closer Tundra Bean Goose! |
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