October Up Date

October was a quite month birding wish in the Rowley house hold with only local areas been visited.

On the 14th I suggested a gentle stroll along the canal at Chedelton, with a sly visit to the Churnet Valley Railway in my head to get a shot of the now bandit style livery applied to 33021 in the same style as applied to 33012 back in the day.
In the flooded fields between the canal and the river quite a few wild fowl were noted plus a few Snipe hiding in the longer areas of grass.

The Void was the port of call for a nice local stroll with my daughter on the 21st this place usually is a void of anything when I visit but I did have a spot of luck seeing a nice Grey Wagtail feeding along the pools edge, with a Meadow Pipit for company although the Wagtail never liked it getting too close.
A nice scene of a adult Coot feeding its chick made also for pleasant viewing with quite a few Lesser Black Gulls starting to fill the pools open water to finish off the visit.

 

On the 24th we all headed for a well earned day out to Conwy, although the tide was out thus most stuff was on the river estuary it still had for a pleasant walk and quite a few birds were seen on our stroll. Although as expected most activity was seen when walking along the river bank.

From the first hide we got great views of a Little Egret although nothing rather these days was good to watch one fishing before taking flight.

 

On reaching the river we came across a large group of Meadow Pipits feeding in the grass and as we approached along the path and they took flight a Snipe shot up out of the grass as well,

On the river itself another group of Pipits were feeding although upon closer inspection they turned out to be Rock Pipit one more for the year list.
Out on the exposed mud were Redshank, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Shelduck, Cormorant and a single Knot mixed in with the Redshank.

Come the 26th we finally decide to go along and see the Scaup that had decided to make Westport Lake its home, Steve Seal pointed out the bird for us which made our life much easier in finding the bird although it was in a spot that didn't really lend itself to grabbing a shot. We couldn't really hang around as we had a date with the play area for our daughter to wear herself out on. We did though get a front line seat for a couple of Coots really battling it out which made for interesting watching.