Tring Reservoirs and Ivinghoe

We set off from home at about 6.00 am and arrived at Wilstone reservoir around 6.30 am. We set off down the path towards the reservoir. As we arrived at the jetty Samuel took out his new scope and set it up on my tripod. We scanned for a while looking for waders we saw some like Green Sandpipers, Greenshanks and a Dunlin.

 

 Notes of Dunlin.

As we carried onto the hide we stopped to take a look at some more gulls and waders I scanned through and found a Black-tailed Godwit.

A Black-tailed Godwit

 Then we decided to go onto the hide when we arrived there was no one in it. We set up our stuff and began birding. There were a few more birds but what I was looking out for was a Water Rail or a Spotted Redshank. We found the Spotted Redshank luckily I had spent most of the night finding the differences between a Redshank and a juv. Spotted Redshank. Unfortunately there was not a Water Rail to be seen. I stayed in the hide for about 2 hours observing the birds close up with my brothers scope. It was amazing to see the exact plumage of a Greenshank or a Lapwing. After seeing all we could at Wilstone Reservoir we moved onto College Lake and Pitstone Quarry there was nothing to be seen at them so we moved swiftly on to Ivinghoe. When we arrived we walked down a path near to a valley were we kept our eyes open to see some birds like Redstarts and Corn Bunting we set up the stuff in the valley and scanned the area. After about an hour of waiting and nothing to be seen we spotted something in a tree down at the bottom of the valley we trained the scope on it and identified it as a Redstart. I wanted to get some footage of it but it was to far away see me and my brother edged towards it slowly not making a sound on the way unfortunately found a died  polecat.

  

This is the died polecat berried in flies.

as we got closer we could make out the distinctive call of a Redstart when we were as close as we were going to get i started to get some footage. I have some notes on the Redstart but I don't have enough time to scan them in crop them and then add them to the post.

A mix of two videos of Redstarts with some music added.

After this we realised it was 15:56 and the train left at 16:26 we had to run back to our bikes which took us about 7 mins which left us 23 mins to get to the train station and it usually was a half hour trip we raced like mental and just arrived one minute early as we got on the train the doors closed shut behind us almost instantly.

(The main birds I saw) (names with a ✔ next to them are ticks for me) (Y=Year)

Greenshank ✔

Common Sandpiper

Green Sandpiper ✔

Little Egret  24

Dunlin Y✔

Wigeon

Black-tailed Godwit

Spotted Redshank ✔

Redstart ✔

Raven 2