7-12-08 Back to Cresswell

A nice day for it... but very cold! After reading about the Merlin and the bittern at Cresswell, I decided to go and look for them again. When we got there, we noticed that the little pond was frozen and there was a pied wagtail on it. We hoped that Cresswell wasn't frozen. Luckily it wasn't and we scanned the water for any rare species. Sad to see, no waders there execpt 10 sanderling and 1 curlew. There was 2 Red-Breasted Mergansers to the left of the hide and in the middle there was some ducks and there was 10 teal, 10 mallard, 2 wigeon, 2 shoveler and 1 goldeneye. After that nothing of major interest for a while... that was until, I noticed a big brown bird flying in and I asked my dad if it was the bittern and sure enough it was but it flew in too quick for a photo and went in the reeds. Unfortunately, there was no Merlin so after an hour we left. On our way back to the car we saw the famous Cresswell barn owl! I got some shots of it and we left for back home. On the whole, a good day birding!

Barn Owl Curlew calling