Pennington Flash

Cormorant 

It was a crisp, bright, sunny morning and I was up with the lark, tra la! After running a couple of errands I decided to bob over to Pennington Flash to see if the juvenile black tern that's been hanging round the past couple of days was still about.

Walking in from Slag Lane 

I got the Plank Lane bus, got off at Slag Lane and walked through the woods to the flash. If anything the mixed tit flocks were even more loosely arranged than on my last visit. I was soon hearing the coots and great crested grebes on the flash and black-headed gulls were flying hither and thither. But mostly thither.

Great crested grebe

Surprisingly enough, the black tern was easy to spot, a grey sprite dwarfed by the black-headed gulls it was wheeling about. It kept its distance, though, never closer than a hundred yards. Just to rub my nose in it it settled on one of the buoys furthest from the shore.

The black tern wasn't being cooperative for the camera. It's on the buoy second-left.

A common scoter had also been reported on the flash so I had a scan round for that without any success. There were large rafts of coots and a dozen cormorants were cooperatively fishing, lined up like they were doing the conga. Way over the other side there was an even longer procession of mute swans by the bank. The coots were coots, the tufted ducks out there were obviously too small to be a scoter, I had to look twice at mallards silhouetted against the sunlight on the water but the shape's all wrong. I wasn't seeing a scoter. Never mind, I thought, I could try again from the car park on the way out.

Chiffchaffs were thinner in the trees than they had been last time. There were lots more common darters and migrant hawkers whizzing about, though. Red admirals, speckled woods and large whites fluttered about the wayside and hedgerows. Somewhere in one of the bits of scrubby hawthorns by the bankside a Cetti's warbler was running through its singing practice exercises. 

Pennington Flash 

The rucks

As I walked along the fringe of the rucks there was a commotion overhead, a black-headed gull screaming the odds at something. I looked up and found that the something it was mobbing was a kestrel. I couldn't see that the kestrel had anything the gull might want to try and steal, it just looked like the gull had had an attack of spite and chanced upon a target smaller than itself to vent on.

Cormorants and lapwings fringed this end of the spit and a raft of tufted ducks cruised about offshore. Further along shovelers, mallards and teal dabbled in the shallows and Canada geese cruised about without any apparent purpose.

Cormorants on the end of the spit

Walking round to the Charlie Owen Hide 

Rather than repeat the route of my last visit I decided I was due a look at the Charlie Owen Hide. The woodland walk round was fairly quiet, the mixed tit flocks were so diffuse they may not even have counted as flocks. Coal tits sidled over to make sure I wasn't anything they needed to worry about (it was like watching a cat finding a stranger in the living room) and male goldcrests chased each other around bushes. A great tit did a disturbingly accurate impersonation of the sneezing call of a marsh tit. A family of long-tailed tits paid no heed as two very vocal buzzards drifted over from the canal at treetop height. By the usual standards here this was fairly quiet.

Heron and shoveler

The pool at the Charlie Owen Hide was littered with teals, gadwalls and shovelers. An eclipse drake wigeon and a couple of dabchicks mingled with the crowds while a heron stood aloof to one side.

Shovelers and teals

Feeding looked to be still suspended at the Bunting Hide, a squirrel and a chaffinch checked the feeders on the off-chance.

At Pengy's Hide the pool was busy with gadwalls and mallards, most of them paired-up, with a mute swan and a lot of coot filling in the gaps on the water. There was a lot of whistling going on between the gadwalls while the mallards kept nipping behind the reeds for furtive liaisons.

I strolled over to the F.W.Horrocks Hide to see what was on the spit and to try and find that common scoter. Nearly all the action on the spit was at the end, herring gulls and cormorants loafing with mallards and lapwings. There was a handful of mallards closer to hand and a couple of cormorants were drying their wings on the fingerpost by the hide.

Cormorants 

I was having no luck finding anything that might be a common scoter as I looked out over the spit. I moved over and looked out of one of the side windows. The first bird I saw, about three hundred yards out on the water, was a drake common scoter, sideways on, dead obvious. Later on, looking from the car park, I picked up an all-black bird in the same position but couldn't be sure it was the scoter: the change of angle made it impossible to be sure whether I was looking at the foreshortened rear end of a coot or the foreshortened rear end of a scoter.

By the car park

I'd walked through the car park and had reached the picnic area when it occurred to me I hadn't seen or heard a car park oystercatcher. I said it out loud. An oystercatcher called out a reply. I wish these things worked all the time, it would save a lot of bad language in the field.