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Here is a few shots of the pair of Red-crested Pochards which have been around Watermead Country Park South for the last month or so...

Ok the title sounds like a bit of porn but it's based on my wildlife highlights yesterday!! Birding highlights included finding a calling Quail in roadside fields between Harston and Woolsthorpe by Belvoir in the Vale of Belvoir just 100 metres inside the Leicestershire county boundary! Not far from the Vale of Belvoir I also visited Saltby Airfield hoping to find Turtle Dove which I had recorded at this site in the last few years. However disappointing I didn't find any Turtle Doves but I did see good numbers of Dingy Skippers (30+)  on the nearby limestone outcrops. Ok so your asking were are the chicks?! Well the chicks came in form of seven Red-crested Pochard chicks by the car park at Watermead CP South when I returned to my local patch later in the evening.  I'm not sure if it's the first time that Red-crested Pochard have bred in Leicestershire but it is the first time in the Soar valley recording area! Dingy Skipper@ Saltby Airfield Dingy S...

After finishing work yesterday afternoon I nipped down to Watermead CP South to check out the gulls. In the car park I saw the regular colour ringed Norwegian birds JAN4 and J2KT and a ringed bird which was most likely the bird from Denmark?! After taking a few photos of the gulls I then drove over to Swithland Reservoir to see if the reported Whooper Swans were still around? With luck on my side stopping by the stone wall on Kinchley Lane, I saw the 11 Whooper Swans briefly on the water and then the group started honking and then took off! The group circled the reservoir a couple of times and then flew off in a north-east direction. With camera in hand I took a few shots of the Whoopers flying around the reservoir before disappearing over Buddon Wood. With the Whoopers gone I checked the female Velvet Scoter was still in the middle of reservoir, it was!... After these sightings I decided not to push my luck and called it a day on the birding front!... ...

Here is a few flight shots of the adult Caspian Gull I saw yesterday at Watermead CP South . Also for some strange reason, this bird seems to favour Watermead CP at weekends, as I have now seen this bird for the last three weekends!!  

Here is a few shots of the adult Caspian Gull at Watermead CP South  late last month.    

Last week I got some better shots of the Yellow colour ringed Black-headed Gull (AEH1) in the car park at Watermead CP South, but due to me having Man flu last week, this first time I have been able to post the photos! The bird was rung in  Leese/Stolzenau, Kreis Nienburg, Niedersachsen, Germany, which is in Lower Saxony and had migrated 690km west. Here is a link of were the Gull was rung: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Leese/Stolzenau,+Kreis+Nienburg,+Niedersachsen,+Germany&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=4p_DTpaUKIO78gOdgc2VCw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=3&ved=0CBcQ_AUoAg

Record shot of the Adult Caspian Gull! With a couple of hours spare yesterday morning I nipped over to Watermead CP South as usual to check the gulls. I have noticed over the last few weeks that for some reason the gulls numbers increase over the weekend. It's probably due to most of  the tips closed and plenty of food around the car park!? Well checking the main island I noticed straight away that it had another Adult Caspian Gull on it!! This was the third sighting of a Caspian Gull in just over a week, so I have now found the second, third and fourth record for the city. With it still being a description species for VC55, I took a few record shots of the bird from the nearby shoreline and let a few people know of the sighting. Looking at the Casper I thought it looked very much like the bird I had found the previous year, so it maybe a returning bird? With Caspian and Yellow-legged Gull now firmly ticked off on the city list it would be nice if we could now have a Med...

Over the last couple of weeks I have been recording the number of colour ringed Gulls at Watermead CP South car park.  As of yesterday I had found at least seven birds which included six Black-headed Gulls and a Juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gull. The Black-headed Gulls numbers were: JAN4 white (from Norway), VO28 red AND V192 red (from Denmark), N322yellow (from Spain), AEH1yellow (from Germany?), E4HM white (from Holland?). The Lesser BB Gull has been a bit more difficult due to the fact that I have only seen it on the island at Watermead CP South and I cannot read the number on the red ring but it looks like 1YMH?! So as it's now the Gull season, hopefully I will find more discoveries in the next few months... Black-headed Gull: V192 (from Denmark). Black-headed Gull: V028 (from Denmark). Black-headed Gull: N322 (from Spain).

Ok sorry for the slow updates on the bird sightings but i'm currently on nights at the general hospital! Any way I'm off to Shetland for nine days this weekend, and if we find anything good I will try and put the news out ASAP!? This year I will be staying at Cunningsburgh with Mr Green, Mr Hagley and Mr Potts and this year we will be ringing in the garden! (The target species this year will be  Yellow-browed Warbler in the hand). Also thanks to Mark Skev for letting me know that I had forgotten to include 3 species on my city list. So now my city list stands at 117 species. The latest bird to be put on the list was a brief Turtle Dove over Watermead CP South whilst vis-migging from the Mammoth with Mr Hague on the 18th.

Here is some photos of another colour-ringed Black-headed Gull at Watermead CP south I saw this morning. I will hopefully find out in the next couple of days were it was ringed?

Yesterday morning I did a bit of  Vis-migging (Visible Migration) from the Mammoth at Watermead CP South. The scores on the doors included the first Meadow Pipits of the autumn moving south. However the highlight of the morning was two"probable" Honey Buzzards which flew south-west over the valley. The first was a dark-phase type at around 9.45am and then another juvenile pale phase type at around 10.15am. Although most people will think its bollocks to the sightings, but between the sightings I watched the regular Common Buzzards which breed in the area and the two birds looked totally different in shape and jizz to the other Buzzards! Also I have always wondered why Honey Buzzards are not recorded more in the county, as there seem to breed in nearby counties and regularly recorded on passage? Maybe these birds are just not on Leicestershire's birders radar? If you want to see the full list of species seen yesterday check out the link for the Trektellen site.

Since the euphoria of finding the Ring-billed Gull at Shawell it's back to normal service again! Going to work on the late shift and checking out the Soar Valley in the morning if I have time? So over the last few days I have missed the two drake Smews down at Watermead CP South as the weather was crap and my bins and scope just steamed up every time you tried to look through them. I did however finally heard the male Cetti's Warbler singing at the same site a day or so later which put my list now on 82 species for the year. Other sightings before the Ring-billed Gull find (sorry Skev, yep I'm milking it!) on the same day included the Ross's Goose of unknown origin, 2 Green Sandpipers, small groups of Tree Sparrows and " Harold" the Whooper Swan on and near the flooded fields at Wanlip North Lakes/GPs.

Hi all, check out a few sites in the valley yesterday, although there wasn't much to report!?Probably the highlight of the day was seeing 3 Little Egrets and 1 Yellow Wagtail on the Hobley Pool/Upper Marsh section of Cossington Meadows . Other sightings included the long staying drake Red crested Pochard and good numbers of Swifts (20+) at Watermead CP South . Strangly for the time of the year Wanlip Meadows was very quiet with only a Common Sandpiper and 3 Common Terns the only noteworthy sightings. Hopefully with the weekend looking good weather wise we should get some more unusal sightings or probably I'm just tempting fate?!

After finishing work I checked out Watermead South to see if there were any Terns around? Getting out of the car and walking towards the shoreline. I noticed straight away a MEGA bird for the Soar Valley. The MEGA bird was a lovely drake Red-crested Pochard !! In almost twenty years of watching my local patch of the Soar Valley this was the first time I had ever seen a Red-crested Pochard in the Soar Valley. So over the last week I've had three local patch ticks, Red-rumped Swallow , Avocet and the icing on the cake, the drake Red-crested Pochard . Knowing that the duck was quite rare in the valley I texted and phoned my birding mates of my find. As the duck was showing very well off the car park due to constant feeding of bread by the locals I took a few record shots of the bird. Just before driving home I checked out the scrape at Wanlip Meadows and noted that two Green Sandpipers was still there, but no sign of yesterday's Avocet. Cheers to John for the supplying the top ...

Hi all, check out a couple of sites this morning and saw at least three Green Sandpipers on the scrape with the other usual waders at Wanlip Meadows .The only other noteworthy sighting I had in the morning was in the form of a female Common Scoter on Watermead CP South next to the island.