Upton Warren 08/01

Our first visit to Upton this year was another late afternoon run out, we decided to just go to the Moors as we guessed there wouldn't be too much activity at the flashes.
We headed for the Lapwing hide which we thought initially was a mistake due to the low sun causing a glare that caused most birds to be in silhouette. It also meant very little chance of seeing any Snipe as we had to look directly into the sun. But the decision was vindicated when a Kingfisher turned up, of course it refused to use the branches placed for it in front of the hide and used the reeds instead out to the left, but it gave us a good show and stayed around for about 10 minutes, so one photo for the record:

Apart from the Kingfisher there were plenty of Teal, Shoveler and Lapwing on view and what seemed like a thousand Coot. A few Pochard were visible over towards the Cormorant perches. We made a move over to the Water Rail hide as the Sun was going down and of course as we entered the chap in there said we frightened a Water Rail off when we opened the door. That's life!!

We did see our first Reed Buntings of 2015 on the feeders so that was nice, I took a couple of standard Canada and Swan shots though just to prove we had been there:

Then in the fast fading light a Water Rail popped out and stayed visible for a while:

Not a great photo but another first for the year.
So all in all a good couple of hours before heading back up the M5!

TTFN!