Wednesday 14 December 2016

Shustoke Reservoir.







Nice walk around Shustoke Reservoir and the fly-fishers pool today which just happened to be the best day of the week so far, with the weather being very clement and yet again it was nice to be blessed with blue skies and lovely Autumnal sunshine.

As you can see by the photos the reservoir is very low, in fact it's the lowest I've ever seen seen it, not that the waterfowl seemed to mind though, at least it wasn't frozen over for them, the numbers on the water were also very low but it was good to see Goosander, Pochard and good numbers of Little Grebe, the fly-fishers pool there was a fair number of waterfowl with plenty of Mallard, Coot, Moorhen, a pair of Mute Swan and a small number of Wigeon.

Highlight if the day was seeing a mixed flock of .c50 Goldfinch and Siskin, I didn't actually see the Siskin at first becaue I just thought it was a flock of Goldfinch, always great to see Siskin which I think is a very underrated bird which certainly can't be said for one of the other highlights of today, namely that of the wonderful Goldcrest, yet again I was alerted to their presence by their wonderful little song, always a pleasure to see them foraging among trees, just before the end of the walk which is along grassland adjacent but not accessible to the reservoir where you very rarely see anything different from the norm but today that was a little different with a Green Woodpecker and a flock of c.30 Linnet present, hard to put a number on the number of Linnet because they were going from the trees, onto the grass and back to the trees at a fair rate.

Birds seen today were, Goldcrest, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Siskin, Linnet, House Sparrow, Wren, Robin, Green Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay, Blackbird, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Pheasant, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Cormorant, Grey Heron, Mute Swan, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe, Goosander, Wigeon, Pochard, Moorhen, Coot, Tufted Duck and Mallard, also notable by their absence were Canada Goose, with not a single one observed.

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