I met up with Colin again yesterday. Being a Bank Holiday we had no intention of travelling all that far so confined ourselves to some of the sites around Cambridge.
We started at Little Paxton and spent around 90 minutes doing the usual circuit around Heron Lake. A couple of nice Garden Warblers near the car park was a good start, with one or two more seen elsewhere. My first Lesser Whitethroat and Cuckoo were heard shortly after but then it got a bit disappointing as it appears most of the Nightingales are no longer present. The lake was rather quiet, apart from the Common tern and Black Headed Gull colony-the cold northerlies keeping hirundines away, and apart from Blackcaps, other warblers were only around in ones or twos.
The norther section-Diddington Pits was much more interesting. There were no passage Black terns or Little Gulls unfortunately but one of the Grasshopper Warblers was very showy, as were the Nightingales-at least five were seen. The habitat here is much more suitable at the moment.
The early afternoon was spent at Fen Drayton. It was very busy with plenty of dog walkers and picnickers, and only a handful of birders. Still rather cold and windy, it was hard going to find the smaller birds, especially when the heavy showers arrived but it did brighten up a bit by the time we got to Moore Lake which was the only one with any muddy islands. The hoards of Common Terns and Black Headed Gulls covered much of them but I did locate a single Common Sandpiper and Redshank. The resident Cattle Egret was a bit elusive and it was a good job we had a scope with us. Eventually by the time we got back to the car park the sun was out and a few Swifts were seen feeding over the adjacent lake.
On the way home we called in at the Ashwell dung heaps for a few minutes where there were three Yellow Wagtails (more were seen later in the evening by Tom Spellar). One was rather photogenic, farmed nicely by the fragrant piles.
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