Decided to stay local once again today and ended up starting my trawl of the area at Napton Reservoir. As you can imagine the water remains high but there's still plenty of reeds showing above the water line and several
Sedge Warblers could be heard singing away. A few nesting birds were located with
Coot and
Great-crested Grebe both sitting. Plenty of
Swift feeding overhead and the adjacent fields were awash with juvenile
Starlings, which seem to be having a bumper year. As things begin to quieten down there were still a few birds in song and these included
Willow Warbler and a couple of
Chiffchaff, the latter probably on their second brood.
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| Spotted Flycatcher today along the Grand Union Canal. |
From the reservoir I drove to a few locations in search of
Spotted Flycatchers and this produced my first UK birds of the year, with three in total. At Flecknoe I decided to take a long walk along the Grand Union Canal towards Braunston. The towpath has recently been cut and I'm happy to say that plenty of set aside on the waters edge has been left. Unfortunately the dull conditions prevented any decent numbers of butterflies or odanata and the best I managed was
Large White and
Orange-tip.
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| Sedge Warbler in full song! |
A couple of
Yellow Wagtail near bridge 100 while I was having my packed lunch and plenty of
Linnet,
Yellowhammer and airborne
Skylarks. A walk inland from the canal near the LNER disused railway line produced a couple of
Grey Partridge along the tracks. Over the last few years this walk has been known to produced the odd
Turtle Dove but sadly despite an hour or so looking none were located or heard today.
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| Common Terns at Wigram's |
Back at the marina the usual
Buzzards were enjoying a thermal, at least two
Lesser Whitethroat are holding territory and a couple of
Common Terns have been regular visitors over the last few weeks. A
Hobby passed through in the late afternoon and an additional Tern Sp. which flew high overhead shortly after I'd returned from taking on fuel, may well have been an Arctic!
