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Showing posts from November, 2024

A ridiculously confiding Lapland Bunting at Staines Reservoir

  The Lapland Bunting is certainly not a bird I expect to see annually. In fact, the last one I saw was 4 years ago on the Malvern Hills. So when a very confiding  and photogenic male was found on the causeway at Staines Reservoir in Surrey I planned a trip to see it. Other commitments determined that the first day I could go was Friday just gone. Given that it had been there a few days already, I decided to wait for it to be reported before setting off as crawling around the M25 to dip a bird I have seen before was not very appealing! I kept an eye on both RBA and our excellent “Twitching the UK and Ireland” WhatsApp group and was pleased to see it reported on our group just before 08:00. Oddly, it didn’t get reported on RBA for another hour so it was a good job I was not solely reliant on that source of information.   The causeway on the reservoir is quite long so I parked at the end where it was mostly being reported from and walked up to the causeway. The last time I was here was a