Our usual January jaunt to Rutland was cancelled due to severe flooding that made access impossible (after one of the wettest years ever, the first month of the new year seems to be forging ahead with similar ambitions).
An alternative trip up to St Aidan’s in Yorkshire proved to be a great alternative with some top-notch birds to be celebrated.
St Aidan’s is a nearly 400 hectares of nature park plonked down between Leeds and Castleford in West Yorkshire. The land was formerly an opencast coal mining area that was flooded in 1988 after the riverbank collapsed.
Always difficult to ignore is Oddball, the giant and unique “walking” dragline mining transformer that dominates the site. There are a pair of Little Owls that have taken a liking to Oddball and hang around the machinery, and we were lucky enough to get good views of one of them at the close of day.
The Little Owl looked remarkably grumpy.
The bird attracting most attention on the reserve was a Glossy Ibis, a rare and slender visitor to these shores although somewhat upping its game of late with many appearances and stopovers. The St Aidan’s Glossy has been around a while and seems at home in the North Ings area of the reserve.
The Ibis never let up for a minute in its dedicated probing around the coarse tussocky grassland with the nearby Moorhens and Lapwings not giving a fig about this exotic visitor.
Next up on the brilliant birds list was a brilliant Brambling. This plucky little finch was mixing with a bunch of Chaffinches alongside a teasel-thronged field filled with Goldfinches.
Little Grebes, Great-crested Grebes, Teal, Widgeon and Pochard, Mallard and Tufted all occupied the various lakes in varying degrees of numbers. A not-so-common Common Gull was spotted amongst the Black-headed Gulls. Above the wooded hillside, a Red Kite wheeled around, and a few Kestrels winged about but the top view was reserved for the male Sparrowhawk that imperiously perched above the reedbeds and, no doubt, kept the elusive Bearded Tits bedded down deep within the rushes. The even more elusive Cetti’s Warbler crept low along the reeds, and Stonechats and Meadow Pipits clacked and piped in the meadows.
A Great White Egret, something of a head-turner in its day but now firmly entrenched in the UK’s breeding population, stalked the far shore of one of the lakes.
So, it was the usual relaxing and recreating for our annual January break – repeated as necessary:
This post can’t be let go without an ornithological nod to this fabulous bird, the Hoopoe, which was frequently seen around the hotel and thereabouts. Several make it over to the UK so hopefully we’ll have them fully settled here before too long…
jacey666 