6th April

Had a very long day 'in the field', and was rewarded superbly for the effort. We started off at the west end of Shapwick Heath NNR at dawn to try and find a few more booming Bitterns (successful!), and were treated to a stunning sunrise. 

Dawn over the marshes

Equally nice was a Woodcock which was returning to its roost after a nights feeding, a bird we don't see very often around here.

Woodcock. The very broad wings help distinguish it from Snipe

 As the sun got up, the low light and frost provided some nice sights:

Grey Heron, looks like one of last years young

Later in the day, we were watching the scrape at Meare Heath when I picked up 3 Common Cranes flying high the reserve. They circled a few times but didn't fancy landing for some reason and continued North-wards. Two of the birds were clearly colour ringed and thus likely to be  re-introduced birds from the Great Crane Project. The other bird was probably ringed too but it was a bit too far to tell for sure.

Cranes, it really is great to see these wonderful birds back in their historical homeland

Once the Cranes had moved on, we noticed that 3 Little Ringed Plovers had dropped in on the scrape, the first ones of the year here. Other waders present were 34 Black-tailed Godwit and 2 Redshank.

Little Ringed Plover, a bit distant

Moving on to Noah's Lake, there was an obvious increase in Gulls. Over a hundred, mainly Lesser Black-backeds and Herring were present, presumably as a result of recent ploughing on nearby fields creating a food source. I was just saying that they would make a great Osprey early warning system (gulls HATE Ospreys for some reason, and can't resist mobbing the hell out of them!), when the flock suddenly lifted off the water and started making a terrible racket. A quick scan of the skies revealed the cause- an Osprey, right on cue! It hovered a couple of times over Noah's and the adjacent Decoy Lake, but all the attention from the gulls forced it to move East.

Osprey. It's clearly missing a couple of secondaries. Being so distinctive so it might be possible to track this birds movements if it's photographed elsewhere

As we were watching the Osprey I noticed a 'honking' call which wasn't quite right for the usual Greylag Geese. It was a White-fronted Goose coming in to settle on Noah's. Presumably the bird thats been hanging around Ham Wall and Sharpham all Winter, yet another good bird for the 'day list'.

White-fronted Goose