Anything for the Bank Holiday sir?... Black Necked Grebe, Lady's Tresses and a Shag!?!

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A Shag at EBR!

Juv BN Grebe at SWR.

Autumn Lady's Tresses no.1

Autumn Lady's Tresses no.2

I spy a grey Knot!

Another view of the Shag at EBR.

My original plan for the day was to check out the last orchid of the season at a site near Wisbech but following a text message from John Hague that Steve Lister had found a Black-necked Grebe at Swithland Reservoir I quickly drove over to Swithland Res.
Joining Steve at the Kinchley lane viewpoint, it was only a matter moments before I had year ticked the Juvenile Black-necked Grebe. The Grebe showed reasonable well, and I took a few distant record digishots of the bird.
Reverting back to my original plan I thanked Steve for finding the Grebe and then drove to Wisbech (well near it) to check out my regular site for Autumn Lady's Tresses (Spiranthes spiralis).
Parking next to the pumping house, I climbed over the fence and started looked at the nearby short turf and after a few minutes of searching I found good numbers (at least 80+) of this delicate small orchid.
As usual a took a few photos of the final flowering orchid of the season.
With seeing this final orchid( unless of course if someone find Ghost Orchid in the next month or so);this spring and summer has been excellent for hunting for Orchids as this was my thirty-three species or variation of the year.
Driving back to Leicestershire I stopped off at Eyebrook Res for the rest of the afternoon.
Scanning over the inflow end I saw the long staying grey Knot feeding on the shoreline accompany with at least four Greenshanks, 4 Little Egrets (one was coloured ringed), an Arctic Tern,a juvenile Peregrine, two LRPs, three Ringed Plovers, eight Dunlins and two Green Sandpipers.
Due to an influx of Shags in the last few days into the Midlands region, I checked the Cormorant platform out and low behold there was a Juvenile Shag sitting in the middle of the platform!
Knowing that a Shag was quite a good bird for the county, I phoned the news out about the sighting and then took a few digishots of the bird to cap off an excellent day in the field.

Comments

Russ Malin said…
Lucky you. I can't remember the last time I had a Shag on a bank holiday weekend..............
27 August 2008 at 13:16
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