Black-throated Diver

On Thursday evening there were some superb pictures of a summer plumage Black-throated Diver posted on the web. They were taken at Farmoor Reservoir near Oxford. Now I may not be into "twitching" or keen on travelling long distances for a bird, but I will travel for a good picture and these were too good to ignore. So Friday morning, I was in the car early and off to Oxford full of anticipation for the show stopping shots I was about to get.

Great plan but the execution was not quite as good. Nobody had told the bird to co-operate. Just before I arrived it had been feeding at the edge of the reservoir but it had been flushed by one of the anglers boats and when I arrived it was sitting out in the middle of the water and there it stayed.

I walked around the reservoir a couple of times. Somehow they always looks closer to the far bank but they never are once you walk round there. It was probably going to come in closer to the bank to feed at some stage but I had to get away about three o'clock to get home for an evening commitment.

This was my best shot. Its a big reservoir and with a 500mm lens, 1.4 extender and 1.6 multiplier in the camera this was the best I could get.

Distant Black-throated diver in the centre

You can blow it up in Photoshop but it's never going to give you a good picture and cannot compare with those taken the day before when the people had it ten to twenty feet from the camera. It just gives me an idea of what I missed.

Heavy crop of the shot above.

Still it was not a wasted trip. As well as the Diver, I saw my first Yellow Wagtails of the year, although I did not stop to photograph them as I was so keen to get to the Diver.

There was also this odd couple sitting on the reservoir causeway. They seemed inseparable and were not at all phased by the walkers, birders and photographers coming within a few feet of them - not me of course.

Dunlin and Sanderling

Summer plumage Dunlin

Summer plumage Sanderling

I went back to look for the Yellow Wagtails but they were gone. The best I could manage was a Pied.

Pied Wagtail

It was a long drive home with the thoughts of the missed opportunity but at least I came away with a couple of year ticks.

Dungeness

Dungeness was today's destinations with the objective of adding a few year ticks before the winter visitors start to disappear. The day got off to a slow start when a stop at Scotney Pits gave us plenty of ducks and Lapwings to look at but very few geese and other than a couple of Egyptian none of the rarer species we were looking for.

Goldeneye

The ARC hide at Dungeness was a little better. A Marsh Harrier flyby as we arrived, Golden Eye displaying, a Great White Egret, and whilst there were no male Smew we did see lots of redheads spread out over the lake. We also had a brief view of a Bittern from the viewing screen as it disappeared into the reedbed.

Great White Egret

The Tree Sparrows were on the feeders and around the garden at Boulderwood Farm as were a number of House Sparrows and Reed Buntings.

Tree Sparrow

I think we were both a little disappointed by the end of the morning. Birds like the Marsh Harrier and the Great White Egret are unusual in Sussex but in Dungeness they are quite common. We had four or five sightings of each during the day. The water levels were also very high and there were no waders around.

The afternoon livened up a bit. We spotted a female Goosander on the far side of the lake and could not believe our luck when she swam all the way over to perform just in front of the hide.

Female Goosander

After much searching of the thousands of ducks and gulls present we also found a Black-necked Grebe. As you can see below they do not always come close enough to give a good picture opportunity.

Black-necked Grebe

A local birder also put us onto a a pair of Black-throated Divers on the New Diggings Pit. We missed them in the morning but they proved a lot easier to find when we returned in the afternoon.

Black-throated Diver

We tried Scotney again on the way home. The geese were there but were on the fields on the far side of the pits so even with the scope we could not see any detail. All we saw were more ducks and Lapwings and a few Golden Plover. We also tried Pett Level . Even more ducks, a couple more Marsh Harrier sightings, and plenty of Curlew.

We have often looked over the sea wall here and seen a vast expanse of sea with nothing on it so we had no great expectations as we climbed the slope. It's always worth a look though and this time there were hundreds of birds. They were mostly Wigeon but we did manage to pick out Red and Black-throated Divers, Great Crested Grebes, and a few Auk species.

With the mist  rolling in and the sun beginning to go down the opportunity for more sightings disappeared and we headed for home. Over fifty species seen on the day and eight year ticks, it had proved to be a good day out.

Black-throated Diver

Today a quick trip out to Eastbourne to see the Black-throated Diver on the lake in Princes Park. I had spent a couple of weeks staring out to sea in an effort to turn distant black dots into recognisable Divers and Grebes, all with very little success. Then I turn up at the park and there is a Diver happily swimming around no more than twenty metres from me.

Black-throated Diver

Other than the bird floating on the surface there was not much to take a picture of. It did not bring any catch to the surface, there was no preening and no wing stretching. Even the dive was very low key.

Low winter sun

Fortunately the light was continually changing and it gave a lot of different effects. All these pictures were taken in the morning between eleven and twelve.

If left alone the bird would move around the pond often giving close views to the people watching but it did move off towards the centre of the lake when pursued for closer views or when dogs went past.

Heading back to the centre of the pool

The park is quite busy with lots of people, children and dogs moving around. It seems a strange place to find a Diver but then last year it had a Bonaparte's Gull. Obviously a place to be watched in the future