Patch Tick Twitch and a Jammy Find

Tuesday morning started off well when I found a Grey Plover out on Phase 1 Wet Grassland on my way to Charlie's office. It was nice enough to stay there all day and was visible from the public hide too. A Great Crested Grebe found by Glenn was on the North Lake. I was out with Charlie and one volunteer installing tree stakes for the orchard trees on the mound and despite not actually birding the increased number of Meadow Pipit during the rain was obvious. After finishing our work for the day I decided to do a final rinse of the site. The highlight was an impressive count of 6 Little Ringed Plover on Phase 3 Wet Grassland. eBird list from Tuesday here.

Grey Plover

Yesterday saw the first proper movement of Hirundines over the Farmlands. My final totals were 82 Sand Martin and 14 Swallow north. 1 male Wheatear was on the mound. Full eBird list here.

However, it has to be today that currently takes the prize for the best day so far this week. I was working from home today but made sure I was all ready to jump up and go if something good was found by someone else. At first light Glenn reported a Curlew on Phase 3 Wet Grassland. I haven't seen a Curlew here since August 2021 so I was going to pop down late afternoon once I had finished work if it was still about. Unfortunately, Arjun and Steve Thomas shortly after informed us all that the Curlew was nowhere to be seen so it obviously didn't hang around for long. The WhatsApp groups remained fairly quiet for the rest of the morning other than reports of 7 Wheatear on the mound and the odd group of Swallows and a Willow Warbler. Then just before half past two in the afternoon I got a text from Alan Wilkinson explaining that he was currently watching 4 Ruff on 100 Acre just about visible from the permissive path. I couldn't believe it! I still needed Ruff and I instantly shared the news onto the relevant WhatsApp groups before setting straight down for them. Whilst I was on the bus (thankfully timings worked in my favour for once Arjun expressed his pain that he had not long ago just looked there and that they must have dropped in during the rain shower after he had left. By quarter past three I had finally got to 100 Acre gate and instantly I got one of them in my bins. I then got my camera and scope out of my bag and then moved just inside the gate to get a slightly clearer view of all 4 of them. Whilst watching them run along the southern edge of the island I suddenly tuned into the fact that there were several Lesser Black-backed Gulls alarm calling in the distance. I realised that this must have been due to the presence of a bird of prey so I looked over towards where all the noise was coming from. Above the Incinerator chimney I picked up a large raptor drifting slowly south west and when I raised my bins I realised it was an Osprey! I had literally just turned up to twitch Ruff as a patch tick and had ended up finding another good bird. It continued low and flew right through the centre of the site. I called my mum because I knew she was on her way down for the Ruff but unfortunately she was still on a bus when the Osprey went over. After getting some photos of the Osprey (the settings were wrong) I went back to look at the Ruff on the island only to realise that they had disappeared! So now not only had my mum missed the Osprey by a matter of minutes but now I feared she was not going to see the Ruff. I waited by the gate until she got there and then we proceeded into 100 Acre to look at the back of the island. A slow walk round revealed that they had indeed flown off somewhere whilst I was ditracted by the Osprey. We continued to walk through 100 Acre past all the beds just in case they hadn't gone far. Just as we were discussing the possibility that they could've relocated to a totally different area of the site a flock of Teal flushed up from a bed up ahead of us. I was going to raise my bins to check there wasn't a Garganey in amongst them when I noticed that four of them weren't Teal at all and were in fact the Ruff. They flew off high west and seemed to just carry on going but thankfully my mum had decent flight views. As we left 100 Acre news came through on the WhatsApp group that Nick now had the Ruff on Phase 3 Wet Grassland so we headed over there to get better views of them on the deck. Thankfully they were kind and stayed put, allowing my mum to get views of them through my scope too. Whilst watching them on Phase 3 we noticed a small group of Swallows flying about and the almost continuous calls of Little Ringed Plovers was notable so I did a scan and found a minimum of 9 of them chasing one another about. It really had turned out to be a great afternoon birding and my eBird list can be seen here.

These Ruff have put me on 157 all time for Beddington Farmlands and are my second patch tick so far this year following on from the Stone Curlew. I will be hoping for Redstart to put me up by one more in the coming weeks.

Osprey - came quite close to the power lines

The 4 Ruff above and below