Things have been quiet on the birding front as I continue to try and mop up a few species on the patches. I have been over to Bolton and added a willow tit to the list. I also conducted a wild goose chase round Pennington Flash to try and add Egyptian goose to the list but they eluded me. How many flooded horse fields are there round the Flash? Quite a few is the answer but none of them contained the family of four geese. Locally I finally added lapwings to the North Down patch as the wintering flock were spotted by someone else and I was able to go down and see them. What was once 60+ is now down to less than 20, and recently 4 remained so they don't appear to be hanging around. Three recent walks have been largely bird free apart from gulls.
The most noteworthy bird of late popped up at WOW on October 19th and was still there on November 9th. It is a blue-billed or Hottentot teal a native of Southern Africa. Despite not being ringed it is of doubtful provenance and so cannot be added to any list, hence the title of the blog. Stephen Maxwell described it as a "fence hopper", i.e. a bird which has escaped from a collection - most likely Castle Espie. We did however have a great morning's entertainment trying to work out what it was. It was with teal, was the right size and it was dabbling. Despite scouring the books we had no idea what it was until someone started googling all types of teal and suddenly there it was in a picture on Google. The pictures give you an idea of our struggles as it did not fit anything we knew and until it flew and showed blue and white wing bars we had no ideas at all
 |
| Blue-billed teal |
 |
| Rear view showing wing bars |
 |
| Female teal for comparison |
 |
| Millet seeking moorhens |
 |
| Little egret |
 |
| Cormorant |
 |
| Eurasian teal |
 |
| Moorhen |
 |
Grey heron
|
We have been getting large numbers of cormorants (20+), herons(16) and little egrets (14), but as water levels drop and the fish are eaten these numbers will fall. Recently we were down to 3, 6 and 4 respectively. The reserve is slowly changing into the winter pattern of ducks and waders, and the feeders are pulling in finches and tits. We live in hope of another megatick like the phalarope, but a redpoll would be nice.
2023
160: Willow tit
+USA/Canada: 26 = 186 for the year.
NDCP
69: Lapwing
Belfast RSPB
93: Stonechat
