Sunday 20th January (My two penneth)

Arrived early again but the corvids had already left the roost this morning with it being much brighter. Two Little Egrets were on roost again and remained until about 07:45. The water level in the finger lakes had dropped by about 10 inches, since yesterday, the river was down at least 2 feet with water now running from Fingers into the river, through the pipe, rather than the other way like yesterday. It was very quiet this morning, a Coot was a nice surprise but other than that the only other visitors were a couple of Moorhen and a couple of pairs of Mallard. I was just about to pack up to go and join the guided walk when a Cormorant turned up. It was while watching the Cormorant fishing that the Otters appeared. They were in the reeds in the gap through to west Fingers and disappeared through the gap. I setup the video camera in case they came back, which, after a few minutes they did. There were two playing in the same reeds for a few seconds before they disappeared again, for good this time. The following video shows the Little Egrets leaving their roost site, followed by a short clip of the Otters:

While waiting for the Otters to come back a Kingfisher put in an appearance for a short time. So not so quiet after all!

I left the hide and joined up with the guided walk (See EN's earlier blog):

The first time we saw the Lapwing I counted 55 although EN thought there were less. The second group was 31, both were heading south but with significant time between sightings. We had 2 Greylags over north and 4 Gadwall over north east. Pair of Mute Swans on East Fingers with a pair of Great Crested Grebe.

With the Corvids and Wagtails on Kingsmead there were c.300 gulls, mostly BHG but some CG. It was spectacular when something put them all up and they swirled together in the strong wind. The Gulls make it look so easy as they soar on the wind, it comes a bit harder for the Corvids but they have fun anyway.

Nothing out of the ordinary on the walk but good company, plenty of birds and it didn't rain. Join us for the next one.