No More No Cuckoo!!!

After work this evening I decided I could just squeeze in a couple of hours over at "Rids Patch" before the footie starts, glad I did as well! Upon arrival all the usual suspects were on the scrap, including five little ringed plovers and the solitary greenshank that is still hanging around. During the coarse of my walk I managed to tick off another five species that I hadn't seen her before, swift, robin, starlin, long tailed tit and finally a cuckoo. A very handsome but quiet male bird was making his way from post to post along the stream in snipe marsh, on occasions he would disappear out of sight into the long grass in the ditch but it wasn't long before he re-emerged. I did managed some images but due to still not having my 500mm lens back yet from being repaired they were very poor (don't they bloody mess about at these dam repair shops!).

No Cuckoo!

This evening the chosen location for walk was over at Rids Patch, as I have recently heard Cuckoo calling at other locations in Leicestershire I thought my patch just might produce one tonight? I decided to take my smaller lens with me this evening so I could capture a few images of this location (but not birds) that would hopefully give a feel for the area.

I'd only walked a 100 yards or so from where I parked the car into East meadow when I came across this barn owl pellet on a fence post, the white area at the front is a skull from some kind of small rodent.

After east meadow you come to the shallow water scrape, here all the usual suspects could be seen along with a very nice pair of common sandpipers, a first for this location and a patch tick for me.

Shallow water scrape

Next I moved onto the south reedbed area, here I notched another patch tick in the form of a superbly marked male reed bunting. You never know, maybe a wintering bittern here one day?

South reedbed

I have named the next area wet marsh, as opposed to dry marsh which is next to it. Here there was a few lapwings and a solitary little ringed plover.

Wet marsh

At the side of wet mash is this rotten tree stump, this is where a pair of willow tits have excavated their nesting chamber. The work of these industrial little birds can be clearly seen in the below image.

Willow tit nest hole.

The next spot that I spent some time at was Q pool, here the resident pair of oyster catchers were located but nothing much else apart from some tufted ducks and coots.

Q pool

I'd now reached the furthest point from the car so I turned and started my way back, I walked down snipe meadow, aptly named as this is a good site for seeing common snipe, you never know a jack snipe will be found here one day!

Snipe ditch.

Not far from the car a fluttering from a hedgerow caught my eye, after a while of waiting and watching an incredible seven passage wheatears were located (4 males & 3 females). This was was a totally unexpected patch tick, poor images due to me having the wrong lens....doooohhhh!!!!

Wheatear  x 4 on the hedgerow.

As it happens it was a very productive couple of hours birding and again some unexpected quality sightings and patch ticks, but sadly no cuckoo!!