Saturday 20th November 2010 - Staffordshire

We thought we were going to struggle a bit in the fog this morning, but fortunately, it was clear at all the sites we visited, but we did drive through some quite heavy stuff en route. Many thanks to those in charge of Fog distribution today. First stop after Westport was at Belvide to see the redhead Smew. It was feeding off the dam in the far corner so it was showing quite distantly. Amazingly, this is my first Smew at Belvide since the long staying 1988 bird.

A simply stunning photo of the Smew at Belvide.

We then spent some time at the feeding station in the woods as a Brambling was feeding on the seed with the Chaffinches. I also managed to bag a Nuthatch and I managed a few pictures of when a swarm of Long-tailed Tits descended but the light was quite poor and the pictures arn't that sharp.







Next stop was at Whitemoor for the Whopper Swan again.


Then it was on to BGP's again, and the Little Egret was still present on the first pit, but everything was extremely jumpy again on the Sandy Pit. I was nowhere near this time when all the Lapwing and Goldies flew up. I also decided to walk through to the Water Park this time. There was quite a bit a stuff on the main lake, with good numbers of Gadwall and Wigeon present.