The Otter was back working both banks of the river in search of food, a single male Goosander appeared on the river late morning, 2 Golden Plovers flew over SE, a Little Egret flew north along the river, 100+ Fieldfares and 5 Corn Buntings flew over south and the garden feeders were full of variety including some strikingly variable Long-tailed Tits as depicted below which were part of a group of 12 birds.
I had taken the afternoon off work with the intention of spending all of it at Grafham but no sooner had I got into the car than the mist came down. Undaunted I headed for Grafham Lagoons and spent an hour here with little success except a female Bearded Reedling which called just once came to the top of the reeds and then promptly dropped out of view. Options were now becoming limited due to the visibility so I retreated to Paxton Pits to look for passerines. An old fashioned large flock of mixed finches and buntings in stubble and weed fields comprised c. 500 Linnets, c.120 Reed Buntings, c.60 Yellowhammers, c.40 Chaffinches and a single Woodlark. c.40 Fieldfares were gorging on any berries that they could find and a flock of c60 Redpolls evaded close scrutiny again.
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| The lower bird has very clean ear coverts, limited streaking on the underparts with a broad white largely unstreakedcrownstripe indicative of race europaeus though probably also within the range age of variability of race rosaceus. There are three recent recoveries of race europaeus all ringed in Belgium and controlled in Essex. |
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