Sunday 12 January 2014

Ticking along

After a morning in Tacumshin I stopped off for a few hours at Cahore. Another glorious day of sunshine and calm weather. A water rail calling in the willows by the car park eluded me and aparently larger numbers of duck failed to produce anything of note. Shoveller and pintail numbers were definately up. A merlin and juv peregrine, presumably the same birds as last week were also on show. Surprise of the day was a pristine marsh harrier quatering the central reedbed. In 2011 and 2012 a single marsh harrier has been seen for one day only in late spring/summer so it was great to get this so early and hopefully it will hang around for the of the winter atleast.
The marsh harrier was the only new bird of the day, hope to make it down again during the week. The white rump on the upper photo was present on the bird, but very small. It looks a lot larger in the photo due to strong light and the head is in shadow. It definately was a marsh and hopefully the bottom pic shows that now!

No comments:

Post a Comment