Little Brown Jobs and one big one!

Dull overcast days don't make good photo's. Plenty of birds around locally with the stubble fields attracting good numbers of finches a smattering of Reed Buntings and now lots of  corvids. At least 200 Rooks & Jackdaws have descended on the area in the last week. perhaps the (slightly) milder weather is causing the leather jackets to stir?

They are very wary and as soon as they see someone coming down the lane they're off! Anyway, back to the Little Brown Jobs:

I haven't visited my local 'secret pool' by the recycling centre for awhile but called in last Thursday. Amazingly a Bittern flew up from the edge of the reeds and dropped quickly back into cover somewhere towards the Shell refinery. That's the problem with this site. If you walk to the waters edge to view everything soon disappears. A return vigil Friday using the Landrover as a hide was unsuccessful as far as Bittern watching goes but there were good numbers of wildfowl on this small pool including this group of displaying Teal - the males lifting their bodies out of the water and tucking their bills into their chins showing off in front of the unimpressed females.

Deciding to check the gulls out on the Gowy tip I walked Molly along a footpath leading from Povey Lane to the Gowy to view the operating tip face. Thousands of gulls milled around as the rubbish was bulldozed into piles.

No gulls were roosting on the nearby fields so I drove towards the landfill site entrance and managed to find a closer view point. My efforts were rewarded with first an adult Yellow-legged Gull and then an immature Iceland Gull! Result and a week of reward for watching some seemingly unpromising local areas.