Skip to main content

All high-browed and in a Smew

  
Yellow-browed Warbler curtsey of Nick Truby


 

Well that’s worse blog title for the year sorted nice and early then!

 

Anyway …………

 

On Sunday I went out for my first full day of birding of the new year with  2 locations in mind. Firstly, Summer Leys nature reserve near Northampton, a reserve I have never visited , where a showy Yellow-browed Warbler seemed to be over wintering. Secondly, Eyebrook Reservoir in Leicestershire which has become the top UK spot for overwintering Smew.

 

Summer Leys NR Is some 90 minutes’ drive from home and after a fairly leisurely start to the day I arrived at 10:00. The visit started off less than perfectly when I arrived to find the car park full. I cheekily parked on some grass but a warden soon appeared and asked me to move. Luckily, a parking spot soon opened up and I was togged up and on my way in no time. I found the reserve to be very pleasant and birder friendly with a series of well positioned hides overlooking well managed scrapes and pools. A very chilled out slow walk while birding and noting new additions to my semi-serious year list had me at the warblers location some 45 minutes later. A few other birders were present and they informed me that the bird had shown briefly 30 minutes ago. Feeding warblers tend to have a circuit they go around every hour or so and sure enough the warbler was soon seen making its way along the hedge in amongst some dense brambles.

 

The Yellow-browed Warbler in the UK is a very interesting example of bird vagrancy. Its nearest breeding range is some 5,000 kilometres away and the vast majority winter in south east Asia.  A small number, however, exhibit a phenomena known as reverse migration and head off 180 degrees in the wrong direction and end up in the UK. The current theory is that this is due to a genetic error causing  them to get magnetic north and south mixed up, see here for a much more detailed account of the causes of bird migrancy.

 

Like many other leaf warblers  it has overall greenish upperparts and white underparts. It also has prominent double wing bars formed by yellowish-white tips to the wing covert feathers, yellow-margined tertial feathers, and a notable long yellow supercilium all adding up to making it a very attractive bird.

 

While I would say that It is not  particularly shy, its arboreal lifestyle  combined with the fact that it is almost constantly in motion can make it difficult to observe. My good birding friend Nick, see his great blog here, had got some great shots of the warbler so I was hopeful of the same but it kept itself in quite deep cover as it fed and the moments it was out in the open were very fleeting indeed.

 

Rather than spend all day on the off chance of getting a good photo I decided to move on to Eyebrook reservoir to look for Smew. On the way back to the car I paused at a feeding station where 4 or 5 brightly coloured male Bullfinches were feeding and rattled off a few shots.

  



Bullfinch

A 30 minute drive had me arriving at Eyebrook reservoir where a narrow road runs parallel to the water. I pulled over and had a quick look at a flock of ducks and instantly recognised the unmistakable sight of a drake Smew in amongst them. A little further along a small group of birders were scoping the water so I joined them and spent a very pleasant 90 minutes watching at least 10 Smew swimming in-between a large flock of mainly Tufted Ducks. They were a  mixture of the distinctive white and black drakes and females affectionately called red heads for obvious reasons if you look at the photo below.

 

Although the Smew are often lumped together with the Mergansers and Goosanders as  saw bills they are actually the only living member  of the genus  Mergellus . You can see the small saw teeth on the Redhead photo, an adaption for holding onto slippery fish. The drake Smew, with its panda like appearance, is quite stunning and very unmistakable. A drake and female Scaup were also in amongst the Tufted ducks. Photos, given the distance of the birds and the low late afternoon mid-winter light , were a little challenging so I’ve also included a few I took earlier. Come 15:30 the short winter day was rapidly turning into twilight and it was time to head home after a most gratifying and relaxing Sunday birding.


Drake Smew at Eyebrook




Drake and Redhead Smew from another location

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albert the Albatross

  What is more improbable -   a)     England’ football team    beating Germany in the knockout stages of a major competition   b)     Seeing an Albatross in England   Actually the answer is a) because it has not happened since 1966 rather than b) as Albert the Albatross, as he is affectionally known, has made a number of passing visits to the UK since 1967!   On Monday evening reports started to emerge of Albert associating with the Gannet colony at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire, almost one year after his    last brief visit to the same site. During the intervening period there have been a number of sightings of Albert across Europe, particularly from the Baltic Sea where he appears to have spent much of the last 12 months. In fact there were reports that he had been attacked and killed in the area by two eagles.    Reports of his death were clearly greatly exaggerated!   The Black-browed Albatross is circumpolar in the southern oceans but very rarely seen above the equator. If I t
2 comments
Read more

The Hawfinches of the Forest of Dean

   Hawfinch - Forest of Dean, winter 2017 A highlight of my winter birding is my annual trip to the Forest of Dean to see Hawfinches. I was unable to go last year due to the post-Christmas lockdown so this year’s visit was even more richly anticipated than normal.   Parkend in the Forest of Dean is my usual chosen location for watching Hawfinches. Here the proven technique of using your car as a hide normally works well. I must also say that,  after a number of quite strenuous twitches recently, I was also looking forward to a much more leisurely birding session!   The story of Hawfinches in the UK is, to my mind at least, a fascinating one. It is what is known as an eruptive species meaning that it occasionally erupts from its traditional breeding grounds to invade on mass countries much further away. This is thought to be driven by a combination of breeding success and local crop failure resulting in not enough food to go around.    Records indicate that the Hawfinch was a very rare
3 comments
Read more

Perseverance or sheer stupidly? – The Belted Kingfisher nailed at the 4th attempt!

         Belted Kingfisher I have had three failed attempts, or dips as birders call them, to see the Lancashire Belted Kingfisher over the last few weeks, including two harrowing encounters with the slope of death, see here .     So when the bird was relocated a few miles away from its original location in an altogether less challenging spot I was soon off on my 4 th  attempt to see this truly stunning mega rare vagrant from North America. We had friends from the village coming to dinner on Wednesday night so I really didn’t fancy a strength sapping silly o’clock departure.  I hence left home at 07:00 on Wednesday morning and heading north again up the car park previously known as the M6.   The Kingfisher had relocated close to Samlesbury at a place called Roach Bridge on the river Darwen. I arrived at 09:30, found a parking spot very close to the bridge, and set off along a muddy footpath towards the reported location. Disconcertingly, many birders were heading back to their cars alr
1 comment
Read more