Black-necked Grebe @ Colwick

After hearing about this on Tuesday evening, I decided that I'd had two late nights at work so I deserved a treat. So I headed over to Colwick before work (it's kind of on the way, but with a small detour!). I arrived there at 730am, in a very gloomy misty morning. And cold! Only about 5 degrees.

There were plenty of ducks to be found, a few Wigeon left over, plenty of Tufties, 5-6 Shoveler, 4 Gadwall, at least 30 Little Grebes which seemed like a high count for the site? A female and 2 male Red-crested Pochard brightened the morning a little, although one was a funny colour! A Green Woodpecker called intermittantly and got my heart jumping (I still haven't got one on my 2012 yearlist!) and also a Great Spotted was drumming closeby. Not many gulls were present, just 30ish Black headed and 3 Commons. I got chatting to a guy as I got my kit out of the car and we wandered round the lakes chatting about Notts birding in general. We covered every inch of shoreline but we couldn't find the Black-necked Grebe! I left him at the West Lake, and walked back to the car and bumped into another chap who said that the grebe had been around the island in the south-east corner. I double checked it but still couldn't find anything. It hasn't been reported on Birdguides today either, whether that's a sign of it's departure or not. The other mildly interesting species I found was this, and I certainly didn't know that it was on site!

Weather is looking good for the moths tomorrow and Friday so I might have a bit of Leps to report soon!

Attenborough pulls a few in

26th Feb - A Sunday afternoon in the glorious sunshine over the weekend couldn't be resisted, so we set sail for Attenborough Nature Reserve. I love a good walk round the pits and woods at this great reserve, there's always something to see and it provides plenty of entertainment for kids too.
We walked from the Barton Lane car park up to the church at Attenborough village and was hoping to get through to the woods at the top to search for the Lesser Peckers, but when we got to the old car park we were blocked by the new flood defence system that they're installing. Instead we cut across to the river and back round to the centre. The birds were out in good force with 46 species in total. A stunning number of Goosanders were present (in excess of 30) but unfortunately the Smew couldn't be found. A couple of Fieldfare were found feeding on Glebe Field. New for the year were Red-crested Pochard, Ruddy Duck and a cracking Bittern which was showing well on Dragonfly Pond (this is the one between Tween Pond and Wheatear Field and is viewable from the main path to the VC). I managed to get a poor mobile grab through the scope, watched it for a minute or so and then it silently crept backwards into the reeds.
Not very often my luck turns out that that! Usually it's "Oh it's just crept into the reeds, you should have been here a minute earlier"
I'll upload a couple of videos of a gorgeous male Bullfinch and a Song Thrush singing his heart out as the sun went down.