Shustoke Reservoir.

Nice trip Shustoke Reservoir today which was only spoilt by events when I got home but I'll come back to that at the end of this post.

Funny day because even though the sun was out and there was mostly blue skies there was still a chill in the air saying that I was supposed to visit this location yesterday, the boots were on and the car was loaded up when it started to rain which didn't stop all day so at least I was spared that today.

The water was quiet for the most part apart from the inaccessible stretch by the sailing club which held plentiful amounts of Lapwing, Canada Goose, Coot, Mallard and of course Gulls, also on the water in front of the club were fourteen Mute Swan which was great to see because you can visit this location on many occasions and never see a Swan.

Also nice to see were lots of this years juveniles still evident, among them were, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Blue Tit, Great Tit, House Martin, Mallard and Coot.

Like I just stated the water was very quiet so the action was with the other birds, namely that of seeing a Green Woodpecker in the car park, also seen were great amounts of Goldcrest, Coal Tit and Nuthatch among the many great mixture of trees that are adjacent to the reservoir.

Birds seen today were, Sparrowhawk, Buzzard, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, House Sparrow, Wren, Robin, Goldcrest, Nuthatch, Green Woodpecker, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Feral Pigeon, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, House Martin, Cormorant, Mute Swan, Lapwing, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe, Coot, Tufted Duck, Mallard and Canada Goose.

The only downer on the day was coming home and seeing plenty of House Sparrows on the feeders so I thought I'd leave topping up the feeders and cleaning and putting fresh water in the birdbaths until it went quiet, so I left it for ten minutes and then looked out, good it's quiet I thought, how wrong I was because there right in front of the kitchen window was a pile of feathers and to the right was a Sparrowhawk with it's 'prey', so I left it too it so it would hopefully not fly off and kill another bird, when I eventually ventured into the back garden there was yet another pile of Sparrow feathers so presumably it's taken two of my babies today. You can see a video of the Sparrowhawk on my Twitter account if you haven't already seen it on the following link. Sparrowhawk kill.

On a brighter note it was excellent to look out of the front window early yesterday morning to see two adult Woodpigeon foraging on the grass with four juveniles, don't think I've seen four from one family at once before.