I was kicking myself this morning, for once I wasn't down at my local patch early in the morning. After performing the initial scan around I opened the hide log book and entered there in the book with the time recorded for when I would normally any other day be there was, 'three yellow wagtail'.
I felt somehow cheated. All the early morning hours and I missed them when they decided to drop in. Of course I hadn't actually been waiting for them to appear, no one could known that they would drop on to the reserve, they weren't expected, but even so I drew my breath in and silently sulked a little.
Even turning around to see the great spotted woodpecker hanging off a branch down low not 10ft behind the hide didn't cheer me up. But then all of a sudden things turned around, not anything yellow... but there on the island were 7 dunlin and in amongst them not one of the usual little ringed plover but rather a ringed plover, two birds that I hadn't as yet seen at Upton Warren this year.
So now I am feeling somewhat happier. A family come into the hide and in conversation they mention that there are 3 common term over by the Flashes and not having seem them this year on the reserve I decided to make my way over to have a look. On arriving at the boating lake a couple of the reserve regulars are stood binoculars in hand scanning over the water. I join them only to be informed 'arctic tern aren't they fantastic'!
I couldn't believe my luck, this just about made my day. I am also extremely glad the regulars were there, especially one who specialises in gulls and terns, otherwise I might have taken a quick glance and thought 'yep, common tern'. Well lets be honest I would have. The vagaries between the common and arctic would have swooped right over my head unless I had one of each side by side about 4 ft away from me posing as they do side on in the Collins Bird Guide on the same page. Slightly shorter bill on the arctic, red rather than orange bill, shorter legs and other little differences - but as it says in the guides 'very similar to the common tern'. So lets be honest, with a pair of binoculars and the terns way out over a lake whirling around it's not that easy and I would have gone home with common tern written in the note book and I would have been happy too. As it was arctic they were and I spent about an hour on the waters edge just watching the terns performing acrobatics over the lake while around 20 swallows perched twittering on the overhead cables just above my head. Lets face it the yellow wagtail no longer entered into the equation.
Photo 'Arctic Tern'' from today.
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