Having been at, an indoor, convention for three days I was keen to get out on the patch, all the more so as @porthkillier had found a 1st winter Turnstone on the Lockwood yesterday. I made the mistake of not going to see one a year or two ago on it's second day as I, wrongly as it turned out, didn't think it would stay through the night. Buoyed up with the idea that they could indeed stick for a while I arranged to meet up with Dave early doors.
As I got to the top of the Lockwood I thought I spotted him further down the bank and wondered how our plan to rendezvous at the Warbler bushes had gone wrong! I got about 100m down when he called from behind! Who were these mysterious other characters halfway down the bank, it turned out not too surprisingly to be the early rising @genghisattenborough and rather more unexpectedly the somewhat less famously early riser Lol B! Either way they had re-located the Turnstone and patiently waited for us to catch up with them, well done chaps.
A splendid, and confiding, creature it was too, only my second on the patch after a rather skittish Spring adult in 2010. There were probably 10 Common Sandpipers mostly on the West bank beach (Lockwood Plage, as it is currently known) and a very impressive total of 22 Little Egrets within about 100m of each other.
Stuart and Lol left us for the more productive pastures of Kent but we decided to press on and be heroes, oh what folly!
A single Wheatear, a few flyover Yellow Wagtails, 1-2 Reed Buntings all on the Lockwood, 7 Swifts and a similar number of House Martins hawked over the Banbury and later 6 Sand Martins flew South over the Low Maynard, a handful of Willow Warblers and that was it. I was going to say there were few Birds on the Southern section but there were no Birds on the Southern section, though goodness knows we tried.
@birdingprof
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