RADIPOLE LAKE - ABBOTSBURY SWANNERY - TRANSFER TO YEOVIL
WEATHER: glorious sunshine, a beautiful morning no wind, but cold!
Well, our last morning of the trip arrived and it was a fantastic sunny, winter's day, birght sunshine with not a whiff of air, perfectly still, I just love those winter mornings.
We had a few target species to look for this morning and one of them was the Bearded Reedling, a great place to look for them is Radipole Lake especially when the weather is like it was this morning. It was a five minute drive from our guesthouse.
RADIPOLE LAKE RESERVE - like a mill-pond in beautiful light this monring
The reedbeds were stock-still, perfect conditions to find The Bearded Reedling if they were about! We stood on the wooden bridge near the visitor's centre for about 20 minutes and found nothing in the reeds except for Cetti's Warbler, Wren and Robin.
We walked to the concrete bridge which was another good site for the Reedlings, along the way a mixed flock of Siskin and Goldfinches fed in the Alder Trees and a Sparrowhawk flew low to the ground along the path towards us, dashing off to the right just before reaching us.
the reedbeds still tall and erect but no bird movement was detected whilst we stood there
Our walk took us around the Budleighlea Loop and back to the car park, we saw all the usual ducks (the male Scaup we saw yesterday had gone) and gulls, herons and egrets.
We left without a Reedling sighting but it had been a superb morning nevertheless. We then took the coast road, heading west twowards Bridport. We turned off the main raod at Rodden and took a minor road to Abbotsbury. A stop on the summit of a hill gave us unbroken views of the East Fleet at Rodden Hive and inland over green pastures and grassy hillsides. We scoped the fleet and found Shoveler, Teal, Wigeon, Shelduck, Red-breasted Merganser, Mute Swan, Little and Great Crested Grebe.
Long-tailed Duck was our main target but Slavonian Grebe, Green-winged Teal and Garganey were also possibilites and had been recent sightings.
There is no access to Abbotsbury Swannery during the winter months because it is closed so our only viewpoint is from the small lane that runs along its northern edge. The birds are distant sitting out on the main lagoon but with good light and decent optics you can find almost anything! Well that was the theory, in practice a lot of the birds were in a small bay which is not visible from where we were standing! However we watched many different species including a huge flock of Lapwings and once again the weather was perfect, it was so good to be out there.
We left around 11:30 and took the scenic route back to Stoford, the scenery in that area is stunning, we enjoyed the trip home.
The was over at 12noon, we had seen 125 species from the 3rd to the 10th January, a great start to our year list. Mike, Lorna and Rob headed off home and so did I.