Eymore Wood 29/01/12

Been a busy weekend as usual, but was having a peruse of some of the other local bloggers and came across a post by Shenstone Birder about Crossbills at Eymore Wood. Now Crossbills have been eluding us for some time. We caught a brief glimpse of a female up in Scotland near Loch Garten last spring, but that's it, so far. So when we saw this post from last Tuesday, we had to give it a shot.

So having done shopping and jobs around the house whilst we had lovely weather on Saturday, we set out Sunday in low cloud and mist, great!! We have never been to Eymore before, but found it no problem and parked up at the top car park. So out came the flask of coffee, and we hung around for a while, we then heard the unmistakeable sound of Crossbills but couldn't see the little ........

So we finished our coffee and togged up to go for a walk, as we set out we chatted to a couple of like minded folk, who told us they has seen 2 females yesterday, and had come back to see if they could spot the males today. We decided to walk down to the reservoir and do the circular walk along the river and backup through the wood. We never did see any Crossbills or hear them again, despite staying and having another coffee in the car park. Hopefully next week we will have better luck. We are off up to Scotland for the week, lots of visits to some good sites planned, but who knows might see some good stuff, might see nothing!

The afternoon wasn't wasted though, despite the weather, the walk was great, enjoyed it and will certainly be making this a regular spot to visit. We did see:
On the reservoirs:
Mallard, Goosander, Tufted Duck, Black Headed Gulls (a few now in Summer plumage), Lesser Black Backed Gulls, Coot & Moorhen.

In the trees around the reservoir and River Severn:
Tree Creeper, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Blackbird, Wood Pigeon, Crow &Long Tailed Tit

On the River:
Mandarin Duck (7m, 6f)

Then Back at the Car park:
Great Spotted Woodpecker & Robin

The light was terrible, so although I tried some photos of the Mandarin at high ISO, they were still rubbish. Some half decent Tuftie photos, but not good enough to post up here.

So thanks to Jason  K (Shenstone Birder) for his blog that took us out to this great spot and only half an hour from home.