I regularly look on the local birding blogs to see what's about and yesterday I saw someone had posted a photo of a scarlet ibis ( obviously an escapee) which he'd seen in the Cotswold water park! Intrigued, I looked further and found it was in a flooded field east of Pit 114 in the eastern section. The water park is divided into east and west sections, the eastern section being fairly close to home, so I decided that I'd try and locate the bird if it was still there.
Now I know that most birders would not add it to their year lists, but I thought I could always try to imagine I was in the Caribbean, with the sun shining in a bright blue sky ( although with somewhat lower temperatures!) It would be a nice local visit, in advance of the longer trip to the New Forest which I have planned for tomorrow.
Having worked out where to go, I parked on a minor road at the end of a footpath but soon realised I was at the wrong spot, and with the help of google maps, turned and walked along the edge of the road until I reached another wide track which I followed. It led alongside a lake to a farm of some sort from where I could see a gap in the hedge where a field was flooded. This was obviously the spot but I wondered if I would be trespassing? I could not see any birds from where I stood, so walked past a couple of empty vehicles and then spotted a footpath sign, - a right of way obviously led across their land, and the place I wanted was only a few metres away from it!
It was a bit boggy in the grass so I was glad of my wellies as I made my way through the gap and immediately spotted the ibis, not too far away, its scarlet colouring making it easy to identify. The only trouble was, I was facing right towards the sun! The bird seemed happily feeding in the floods so I had to hope that either a cloud would cover the sun or that the ibis would come closer and to my left so that the sun was shining more on it rather than behind it. With the former unlikely, I had to wait and watch. Thankfully, with nothing in particular to disturb it, and as I was somewhat camouflaged against the bushes behind me, the scarlet ibis eventually started to head in my direction and eventually passed about 30 metres in front of me where I was no longer looking right into the sun. I did my best to get some shots of it although I struggled with the lighting a bit. After a while the ibis turned back towards the way it had come, and I decided to leave, it still seem quite undisturbed by my presence.
Satisfied to have seen a rather different bird, I set off back down the track; on the way I saw and heard a raven overhead, and pausing at a gate, spotted a raft of red crested pochards on the lake, both new for the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment