Late January

I have paid a few visits to the reservoir but it has been really, really quiet.

I have been birding, so far this year I have been the Wyre Forest (on the way to walk the Malvern Ridge) and seen two male, and one female Two-barred Crossbill. A week later  saw “The Captain” and Godfrey (think Dads Army) accompanied me on a day in Nottinghamshire where we saw several Parrot Crossbill.

I have also been to Norfolk enjoying a good day out birding, only to hear that a Hume’s Leaf Warbler had turned up on one of my “patches”, namely the Hams Hall Outflow. When the weather eventually cleared on Sunday I managed to get reasonable views. I went back on Monday and the bird was performing much better.

I have seen a lot of finches and buntings in the Moat House/Holly Lane area but it was the first time I had really had a chance to grill them. Viewing is really difficult as of Monday the hedges hadn’t been trimmed back. Anyway to cut a long story short I found a Brambling, there may well have been more there are certainly a lot of birds.

Wednesday 15 January

Managed to squeeze an hour in before dark tonight. I was struck by how low the water levels were, if only they could have been like that during August/September last year. Anyway, there wasn’t much around in fact there were only 23 Pochard. I checked out the woods around the small pool but it was probably just a little too late to make any impact.

Back at the car park I had a quick look and counted 23 Goosander in the roost but as I said little else.

A Quiet Start to the Year

Having check the reservoir several times since the turn of the year it has been rather disappointing with very little about. I think we probably need some cold weather to get the birds moving about a bit.

I had an email from Keith Whitehouse who lost a Garmin GpsMap60 Csx Sat Nav around the reservoir last Saturday, if anyone did pick it up let me know and I will forward his details.

Sunday 5th January

I made my third trip of the year over today seeing very little. There are very few wildfowl with the Pochard numbering a measly 32. There are very few passerines as well. On a normal visit I would expect to see between 40 to 50 species at the moment I am struggling to see 35!

It is probably as much to do with the mild weather as anything sinister but on a whole the Reservoir has been rather poor over the last year.

I walked from Coleshill down the River Tame and home this morning having a little more luck with Siskin, Lesser Redpoll, Treecreeper and the highlight a male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker about 400 yards further down the access road from the Ladywalk entrance by the fishing club, it was showing very well for about 20 minutes.