January Weekend

Saturday morning saw us going round the public loop of Pitsford Reservoir, another 7.5mile walk. We'd seen county reports of a Red-throated Diver and as spotting it would be a first we set off full of enthusiasm. No such luck! There were a lot of boats on the water which I guess would have disturbed it. Chances are it relocated to the nature reserve side instead but you never know unless you look! On the way round we found a pair of Stonechats, this male showing well:

















Walking along the causeway towards the sailing club, this Goldeneye drake was close to the wall, so I got my best Goldeneye snap so far:














Heading back to the car park and past the tumbledown farm buildings there were a number of Fieldfare in the hedgerow, including this one:













So a good walk before lunch but no Red-throated Diver... hope it hangs around!!

On Sunday it was my wife's birthday so we had dinner and stayed at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons for a glorious 10-course vegetarian dinner, though the room was a little pricey! In the morning after checking-out we had a mooch around the grounds, in particular the vegetable garden. In one half-full pond this tern statue stood out:



















From Le Manoir, we headed on to Otmoor (http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/o/otmoor/index.asp), thankfully the range was shut for the day! It was a very quiet reserve for birds on the Sunday, being cold, windswept and mostly overcast. We headed out along the extremely muddy path and witnessed these Canada's doing a fly-past:















There was a Willow Tit at the feeding station and we spotted a couple of Bullfinches but they didn't hang around.

On the way back (it's a 2.5km track which you follow out and back) the sun came out making it a much more pleasant spot. This female Stonechat was showing well on the side of the path:














All in all an excellent weekend, we even got around to planting the last three trees in the garden when we got home on Sunday!