Patchwork Challenge - Longham Lakes Visit 15 and 16 23 October and 6 November 2016

23 October 2016
My trips are getting more and more infrequent, meaning I'm not getting the luck Martin has been getting.

Speaking of Martin, I finally met him for the first time since the challenge began. He's a lovely chap and it was nice to finally meet him and his son after reading his blog entries for the past 10 months. He mentioned a Snipe that had been spotted on the island, so I said my goodbyes and headed off with my friend Chris.

No luck on the island, so we continued with our walk, seeing the usual coots, grebes and tufted ducks. It wasn't until we reached the back of the second lake that my luck began to hold out. We saw plenty of Autumn ducks, including Shoveler, Teal and Wigeon, which were the first since January for me. As we continued around we flushed a small flock of Meadow Pipits, my first new birds for a while. We scoured the small island for the Kingfisher that Chris had seen several times, but has continued to elude me, and I lucked out again. We did spot a male Stonechat though, my first for the year here.

As we headed for the car pack we tried the island to see the Snipe, but again, nothing was there. As we were leaving it flew past us, easy to tell due to its flight. A few moments later a female Sparrowhawk flew fast and low through the car park.

06 November 2016

Headed out today as Martin had used his new scope and spotted two Egyptian Geese on the big island the previous day. Annoyingly, I didn't see them. In fact I didn't see much of anything except for about 150 coot, 50 herring gulls and lots of winter ducks. I was with my wife and daughter who were complaining of the wind and the cold, so I wasn't able to do a thorough scan like I wanted to.
Oh well, there's always next week.

A very distant Little Grebe.

Lazy Cormorants.

Mute Swan

I'm now at 66 species for the year, which is pretty terrible if I'm honest. I was hoping to hit a 100 birds, but year's end, but at this rate I'd be happy with 70 :P

I do wonder if I lose out by not having access to a scope like Martin, but he's a lot more regular than I am, which means he has more chance of seeing stuff :)