2nd October - Cotswold Water Park

Having left home to go to the Water Park for this trip in thick fog and thinking to myself, 'the fog is usually a lot thick there than elsewhere' I was pleasantly surprised to find that it cleared as I reached the first lake.

That has to be a good sign and so it turned out to be.

We started off with a look at some hedgerows laden with fruit, hoping to see some migrants and the first thing we saw was exactly that, a migrant hawker dragonfly.  We saw a number of birds busily hunting food, including chiffchaff, blackcap, chaffinch, long-tailed tit and bullfinch. Overhead grey wagtail, meadow pipit and pied wagtails were migrating south.

As we reached the lakes we saw a variety of waterfowl including great-crested grebe, cormorant, lesser black-backed gull, coot and tufted duck. We then noticed a smaller grebe with some coot, it was a juvenile red-necked grebe. An unusual site at an inland site!

a distant juvenile red-necked grebe

We carried on and had great views of a flock of shoveler as well as teal, gadwall, pochard, mallard, moorhen and a little egret.

As we continued back to the car park we picked more birds feeding in the hedges including song thrush, blackbird and treecreeper. A great morning's walk! (NA)