Pennington Flash

Egyptian goose

The good news is the work on the gas main's completed so I'm free to come and go as I please again. The bad news is that I had an attack of choice paralysis. In the end I toddled off to Pennington Flash because it's fairly near and I knew I could get a cold drink or ice cream from one of the vans. Which was good as it was a little warm.

The path in to the car park was noisier than last week with wrens, robins and woodpigeons making themselves heard. Lots of families of people about by the flash but as usual nobody being silly.

Mute swans

On the way over I'd noticed that there had been a report of a black tern here about an hour previously so I scanned about in hope but with no joy. Not altogether surprising: black terns tend to be hit and run visitors. Strangely there were no common terns about either. Plenty of black-headed gulls about and that big raft of lesser black-backs was still sitting in the middle of the water.

I'd found a bench in the shade and had spent quarter of an hour confirming that I wasn't going to be seeing a black tern today. "Ah well," I thought, "I wonder if I'll have any luck finding any of those Egyptian geese that have been kicking round." I put my binoculars down and looked at the bank just below me…

Egyptian geese

The corner by the Horrocks Hide was occupied so I wandered down the path to see what I could see by the Tom Edmondson Hide. No kingfishers today, just a lot of mallard and gadwall feeling the heat, a heron from the screen and a pair of moorhens with small chicks by the hide. A reed warbler and a willow warbler were singing from the vegetation by the path.

Heron

There were a lot of dragonflies about: the usual brown hawkers patrolling most everywhere, common blue damselflies dancing on the water and black-tailed skimmers chasing each other across the reed margins.

The pool by Ramsdales Hide was fairly quiet: a few mallard, a heron, a dabchick and a couple of lapwings. Out in the main body of water a few great crested grebes and a party of tufted ducks were half asleep.

Walking back to the Horrocks Hide there was a chiffchaff following a family of blue tits I struggled to find in the trees. Looking out from beside the Horrocks Hide the spit was standing room only for lapwings, black-headed gulls and mallards all panting in the heat. Down at the end there was a few greylag geese and a couple of cormorants. Close to the hide there were also a few Canada geese and moorhens and, in the middle of the crowd, an Egyptian goose. I didn't manage to see any of the others so I couldn't say whether there were three or four of them there today.