Davidstow Airfield and Steart WWT
After my attempt to photograph the Long staying American Golden Plover over a week ago failed, another attempt was on the cards. This time i went down with another local photographer Lee Gardiner. The weather was a bit hit and miss on the way down and as we approached Davidstow the fog came down!!!! Not good for photography!!!
We arrived at the Airfield and you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. We started to drive around the Airfield checking the pools and margins for the bird. First trip around produced a few Pied Wagtails, Meadow Pipits, Crows, Rooks and around 16 Lapwings.
The 2nd trip around was a bit more eventful I was obviously not paying attention and drove right past the bird. Luckily eagle eyed Lee caught sight of it and screamed out to stop. So i smashed on the breaks and there is was. The Large white Supercilium was the big give way.
The bird seemed very skittish and was moving up and down this seemed unusual behaviour as everyone pervious to us had been viewing this bird at point blank range. So we gave the bird some space and watched it feeding. Eventually it came and stop about 5 meters from the car were it sat for over an hour giving us amazing views. The sun even shone for about 5 minutes.
The only thing that seemed to bother this bird was the occasional Rook or crow overhead when it would sit low into the Grass.
After about 2 hours of watching this bird it moved off allowing us to photography the bird at a distance. What an amazing bird hopefully it will stick around for others to see.
On the way out of Davidstow we noticed a flock of starlings feeding amongst the horse dung. They are so often overlooked but are such an amazingly beautiful bird up close.
Davidstow after the fog had lifted
On Route back to Bristol we stopped off at WWT Steart a new and exciting wetlands reserve near to Bridgewater. The reason for the stop off was to see the Pallid Harrier that has been in the area for the last week.
We had a good walk around the reserve and it seems to be producing some good birds already. Also on the day a Great White Egret had been reported sadly not seen by us.
We had noticed a large gathering of birders on the far side of the reserve so headed around. The Pallid Harrier had been seen from here earlier in the day. We were there for an hour before it was seen, but soon disappeared into the reeds. It was another 15 minutes before it was seen again. Although views were distant i managed to watch it though my bins. My 2nd new bird of the day.
