Roaming around

Yesterday was a group outing with LGRE and two of his regular birding buddies. We met up early doors with a full days birding planned. First stop was to be at Frampton Marsh for the long-staying long-billed dowitcher. This is almost certainly the same bird which has been roaming the country for a few years now. If so, I have seen it in Kent and also at Frampton before Xmas. It is now over 170 days since it arrived there.
The journey up was pretty misty but as we approached the reserve it cleared and we thought we could be in for a good day. As we arrived though the mist rolled back over the marsh and we were in a right pea-souper. Another birder we bumped into as we got out the car told up that no more than 20 minutes before it was crystal clear and he had seen harriers and merlins over the marsh. Now you could barely see the hundreds of brent geese no more than 50 yards away!! With visibility almost nil we hung around gossiping in the visitor centre for an hour till we gave it another go. The mist had lifted slightly but it was not ideal. We split up and tried to cover different viewpoints but very few birds were in sight. Geoff, who I was with, finally got a call form LGRE - he had found the dowitcher as it flew into the area he was watching. We yomped down and indeed there it was - a dim shape in the mist.

Dowitchers should be in the USA so this one is now a proper immigrant not a migrant. It is a medium-sized wader, with a very long bill which it was using to probe vigorously in the mud for worms.

Appalling photos but you should be able to see the eye-stripe as well. Not much else around but we did bump into 3 other birders who we got onto it straight away, saving them a lot of time. It turned out I knew them "virtually", the Andersons, with Brian and his blog being to the fore!!!

With a busy itinerary we packed up the gear and headed off for our next stop. This was to Deeping Lakes for the LEO's. The weather wasn't much better and visibility not great but we saw 3 owls roosting on the usual island. What was better were the large number of goosanders on the river next to the road by the reserve. I think we had over 20! No time to rest though and we set off again to Thorney Toll for an over-wintering rough-legged buzzard. This is a different one to the Holme Fen one I've already seen. With a bit of creative navigation from Lee we got to the travellers site from where you could scan the flat farmland. Another birder put us onto where it had been seen and shortly we saw both it and a hen harrier quartering the fields (I dipper the hen harrier). Both were at great distance though!!

No rest so off we went again back to almost where I was brought up. The Crab and Winkle pub in Werrington has been hosting two waxwings for last few days. My dad used to have the occasional pint there as it was only 10 minutes walk from the house. I needed no sat nav to find this one. The birds were present but just sat up in a tree not feeding in the increasing gloom of the late afternoon.

I thought that was it for the day, but Lee had one more treat for us. A hooded crow has been in residence at Ferry Meadows Park on the outskirts of Peterborough all winter. Lee gave it no more than 1% chance of getting it though!! We got to the car park and located the meadow where it is normally seen. It looked good with quite a few crows around but all were common carrion crows. We scanned them all and as dusk started to fall we saw they were gathering in trees to roost. Finally we thought we had the hooded crow, showing paler in flight than its friends. We walked round to where the roost was and found it finally, sitting high up in a tree. That was it for the day. A good if tiring expedition. We set out with 5 targets and got them all together with a few other nice bonuses as well. Two more year ticks including hooded crow which saves a a trip to Scotland!!!