Tuesday 30th October

At last, finally a good bird, for me anyway. I had a few hours off work and as it was a cracking morning thought I would take a walk around the reservoir. There was a Bullfinch in the car park, worth mentioning considering the dearth of birds recently. As I made my way around the west end I picked up a distant Grebe, it look larger than Little and black and white in colouration. My first thought was bloody hell another Black-necked Grebe (I have found five in the last couple of years).

But as I got closer it didn’t have the correct head shape and looked quite large, when I caught up with it unfortunately it had the sun directly behind it, but it was an obvious Slavonian Grebe. At that point I received a phone call to inform me that there was illness at work and I had to leave!! I put out the news, and left. This is the first Slavonian Grebe that I have seen at Shustoke, I am sure there have been others but not for a while. I am not aware of any in the West Midlands this year, so it might be a better bird than I thought.

On the way back to the car park there were double figures of both Fieldfare and Redwing and a couple of Lapwing flew in.

Afternoon, apparently there was a Knot (Steve Cawthray) this afternoon briefly. Also Lynn Wimbush may have seen two Slavonian Grebe yesterday (Monday).

Upper two Slavonian Grebe, Paul Lathbury

Slavonian Grebe,  Bob Duckhouse