A Good Morning's Birding

It was arranged that me and my good friend Graham would go birding to Blacktoft Sands and then locally if time permitted.

Graham picked me up at 8 oclock and it was an overcast day so we decided to head to Blacktoft to see if the Slavonian Grebe was still there which had been present for a couple of days now we arrived at 9am and headed off to the hide where the grebe had been seen and to our surprise we were the only car in the car park. We got into the hide and lifted the hide windows up and the first bird we saw was the Slavonian grebe quite happily swimming infront of the hide amazing really as we were the only birders there i managed a couple of phonescoped pics with my galaxy s24 and my vortex scope which i will attach at the end we decided after a short time that we would head back to Wombwell ings as there was a snow bunting and water pipit there which i needed for the year. On the way back to the car we got great views of Marsh Harrier and Tree Sparrow which are birds that are flourishing at Blacktoft.

We arrived at Wombwell at 11am and took the short walk down towards the hide which isnt that far we could see birders in the distance so we thought we had a chance of seeing 1 if not both of the target birds.

We got to the hide and asked a birder is the Snow Bunting still here to which he replied yes and he told us where it was and after a few seconds we got on it and watched it feeding in the grass and the bird showed extremely well for the hour we was there and what a fantastic bird to get inland . After watching the Snow Bunting for a while i decided to step out of the hide to look for the Water Pipit and after 10 minutes i found it feeding on the waters edge and that bird showed well for about 5 minutes before flying to another pond behind us and was lost to view. So a good mornings birding 3 year ticks and good company.

Slavonian Grebe