Herts Local Patch Competition - 27-28.4.24

Another year had passed and it was time for the local patch competition. I was on site at 5.10am at Wilstone Reservoir but sadly it was raining and did so for the first 3 hours and even sat in the hide it was freezing cold. 

Hirundines started appearing including my first House Martins of the year. Common Tern and Sedge Warbler were also year firsts and just as I was leaving the hide Ian Williams said he had a Swift near the car park steps. Another year tick and brought up 150 species for the year. A couple of Reed Warbler were had at cemetery corner before I ventured over to the other reservoirs. News was coming in of tern movement in surrounding counties so it wasn’t much of a surprise when I’d finished walking around Tringford Reservoir that Dave Bilcock had a found a Little Tern back at Wilstone. I rushed back and got onto it. 30 minutes after it was found it flew up and away to the SW having only been seen by 5 of us. It was just my 2nd for Tring and 3rd for Herts. It was also the rarest bird seen in the county that weekend so has won me the prize of a painting of the bird by Matt Moreton. A nice Arctic Tern was also seen and the number had risen to 3 by the time I left to visit College Lake and Pitstone Quarry. 

Even though I couldn’t count what was at College Lake as it was just in Bucks I still popped in and saw the 2 Barnacle Geese present one of which has a yellow ring Y65 which was from one of the feral populations from Bedfordshire. The quarry was full of water which after the amount of rain we’ve had recently was much of a surprise.

12.5 hours later and I’d seen 68 species but was miles behind the leaders.

Black-winged Stilt

With heavy rain forecast for most of the morning I decided to have a lay in before heading back up but as it was I felt a bit rubbish and was preparing to miss the whole day. But as is so often with birding a good bird turns up and this time it was a female Black-winged Stilt just over the border in Bucks. I predicted the future by saying it’d avoid setting down in Herts and go to College Lake. Frustratingly it was seen to fly into Herts airspace and guess what? It was then seen at College Lake! Having seen the pair there 5 years previously I wasn’t going to bother but after being told it was flighty  went hoping it’d do the right thing  sadly it didn’t and just fed at the far side of the reserve before falling asleep just as the reserve closed. Still a nice addition to the patchwork challenge if nothing else. Common Sandpiper was a year tick and a pair of Shelduck dropped in for all of 3 minutes.