Avez-Vous un Cuppa?

Sometimes you think why did I bother going out Birding as this was one day when nothing went to plan?! The plan of the day was originally for myself, John and Brian to go to Norfolk, but as John had a bit of man flu we decided that it wasn't the best idea to be stuck in a car for two hours with someone coughing up there guts!! So me and Brian decided instead to check out a few sites in Leicestershire. Well to cut a long story short, we dipped on any Jack Snipe in the Soar Valley , there was no interesting Gulls at Albert Village Lake , no sign of any Corn Buntings at Oakthorpe and to top off a great day absolutely nothing of note at Swithland Reservoir !!! Hopefully as spring is approaching this day will be a distant memory when I'm chasing the spring migrants all over the county in the next few months?

Following info via the LROS website and John Hague's text message, the destination for most of the day was Swithland Reservoir as the reported Bittern had finally become viewable from the causeway. The Bittern had been around for at least month but had been skulking in the private sections of the reservoir, so I expected a bit of a crowd for most of the day to view this delightful Heron. Although I got to the causeway around 10.00am I met up with Ben Croxtall and disappointingly he said that there was no sign of the bird! So after about two hours of staring at the same clump of reeds I decided that maybe the Bittern wasn't going to show and also I had to nip into University to sort out some plans for my final assignment so I drove home for some lunch and then onto University. After my tutorial I decided to return to Swithland Reservoir to finally see if the Bittern had shown in the afternoon. Arriving back at the causeway I met up with Allen Pocock and Norman Hall who had just...