The Deskbound Birder: Slimbridge WWT

Friday, 23 December 2016

Slimbridge WWT - 10th December

We had the weekend at our cottage in the Cotswolds and on Saturday I spent the morning at Slimbridge. The weather was pretty atrocious and so my time was spent dashing between hides. I paused at the Asia collection for a few moments and couldn't resist taking a couple of images of two species I had recently seen on the Birdquest China Wetlands trip but which eluded decent photographs so here are a couple of gratuitous images of Falcated Duck and Baer's Pochard.

Falcated Duck - Slimbridge WWT

Baer's Pochard - Slimbridge WWT

In the south hide there were good numbers of Herring Gull and Black-headed Gull with five Lesser Black-backed Gull. Approximately 11 Snipe and 350 Lapwing were also present. I wandered up to the Zeiss Hide, here there were very large numbers of Lapwing, Pintail, Wigeon and Teal and around 600 Golden Plover - quite an impressive sight. There were also 12 Ruff showing distantly from the hide. Six Barnacle Goose showed distantly but I couldn't locate any White-fronted Goose - numbers have declined at this site significantly. I then headed to the hides at the Rushy Pen where a winter plumage Little Stint was showing distantly - its not often that I have seen this plumage in the UK. A total of 25 Bewick's Swan were present on Rushy Pen and it was good to get close views of these birds.