Slimbridge Saturday

On Saturday I thought was about time that I paid a visit to Slimbridge. After discussing with my birder’s wife, we agreed that she would stay at home and go shopping (for my Christmas presents) and I would go to Slimbridge with a friend, Capt Blackeye to try and score her some species not yet notched up for the year. After just over an hour from leaving home we arrived at Slimbridge to find the car park absolutely heaving, maybe people were hoping to find the stars of Autumn Watch loitering around the canteen? Our arrival time was just after high tide which allowed us to score our first target species, Golden Plover, not just one bird but about 900 along with hundreds of Lapwing and a decent sized flock of Linnets. We then spotted our second target bird, White Fronted Goose and decided, as we were on a roll to rush over to the Zeiss Hide to try and nail a Bittern for Blackeye. Unfortunately, after an hour’s wait, there was no sign of even one of the two that had been showing the past few days. We were entertained though by the comings and goings of the Lapwing, Dunlin and Golden Plover all of which seemed to be constantly spooked by the gusty conditions. As, any discerning Birder would do, I decided to check Birdguides to see if there was anything good in the vicinity only to notice a Little Stint had been reported from the exact same hide 5 minutes earlier. This kind of behaviour really annoys me, there were only 5 birders in that hide on the upper deck besides ourselves, so it must have been one of them. What I cannot understand is why report the bird on Birdguides if you are not prepared to share it with others in the same hide? Clearly that person was one of the many grumpy birders that we encounter on a weekly basis who go round with long faces. I know birding can bring out the solitary in all of us and it is a chance to be on our own in this mad world, to unwind and relax and for me, that makes me happy. If birding makes you so miserable, why not give it up and give up some hide room to someone who actually enjoys their hobby? Rant over. Anyway, after all that, myself and Blackeye could not locate the Little Stint so we decided to give up and made our way to Frampton to see if we could find any Goldeneye or Goosander on the lakes there. The day was definitely working out to be the namesake of this blog, as the only thing we could find on the lakes were Coots and Tufties. We decided to return to Slimbridge for the remainder of the day to continue to miss the Little Stint, Bittern and a Sanderling. We completed the day at the swan feed with James performing his swan feeding duties, much to the delight of Blackeye and I phoned my birder’s wife only to discover that she had been shopping solid for six hours – I must have a lot of presents!