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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!   

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