Three Garganey Visit our village lake

This morning first thing I went for very pleasant sunny walk with Carolyn and the dogs. It really felt as though spring was here, the violets were in bloom, the Cowslips were just coming out and Chiffchaff sang from the rapidly greening hedge rows. When I got home I settled down with a nice cup of coffee and checked RBA. To my great surprise three Garganey had been found on our local village lake less than a mile from our house! The report said there was no further sign at 10:00. Ever the optimist, I shot down to the small lake on our small holding to see if they had relocated to it – sadly not!

We were visiting my daughter and partner in Worcester to meet their new puppy today and we did not get home until around 16:00 when I checked RBA again and found that the Garganey were still on the lake but said to be exclusive near the dam. Now I’ve been to this lake many times but for the life of me I could not remember seeing a dam there! I grabbed the camera and bins and dashed off to the lake. Five minutes later I was watching a stunning male garganey swimming by the reeds through my bins. The dam turned out to be a walled area with a sluice gate controlling run off from the lake.

I would rate Garganey as scarce rather than rare birds that I would expect to see every year but not within walking distance from my house! They are our only migratory duck spending the winter in southern Africa and India. They are rare schedule 1 breeding birds in the UK, most of the birds we see being on migration stop over to their breeding grounds further north.

After watching the one drake for a few minutes the two other birds flew out of the reeds and into the centre of the lake. They were a little distant for anything other than record shots so I fired off a few and then watched the birds through my bins – I’d rushed out of the house so fast that I forgot my scope! I was joined by two other local birders and we chatted a while before we all had to leave, dinner was waiting!

A closer shot of a bird on Stourvale Marsh last year

A most unexpected but very pleasant surprise, thank you Mr, Mr and Mrs Garganey!

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!

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