{"id":5396,"date":"2013-03-16T11:05:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-16T11:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/?p=5396"},"modified":"2013-03-18T13:11:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T13:11:47","slug":"spring-what-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/spring-what-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring &#8211; What Spring!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<span style=\"color:#FF8C00;\"><strong>Sunday 10th March birding at Rutland Water in a howling gale and snow storm!<\/strong><\/span> Spring has taken a backward step for the time being. Despite the snow and freezing wind chill,&nbsp;a few good birds were around but took some finding in the poor conditions. A winter plumaged <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">Slavonian Grebe<\/span> and a <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">Black-necked Grebe<\/span> were together in the north arm. At one stage I observed them displaying to each other,&nbsp;rather bizaare I thought? The two birds were certainly staying close together, almost as a pair.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWandering around the various lagoons, a variety of waterfowl were seen, which is typical at this fantastic site. <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">Egyptian Goose<\/span>; <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">6 Scaup<\/span>; <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">11 Smew<\/span> (1 drake), were all year ticks. Many Goldeneye, a male Goosander, numerous Shelduck and high numbers of Gadwall, Teal, Mallard, Wigeon and Tufted Duck.Also <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">2 Green Sandpiper<\/span>; a <span style=\"color:#FFFF00;\">Water Rail,<\/span> 2 Redshank and at least c30 Dunlin.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span style=\"color:#FF8C00;\">On arrival back home<\/span>, I suddenly realised that it was Webs Count weekend, so a mad dash up to Staunton Harold Res was in order, to complete my count. What a surprise as I arrived on site, to see an adult <strong>Kittiwake<\/strong> fly over the dam end of the reservoir. A year tick for the site but&nbsp;other highlights were very few and far between. I managed to find 7 Teal and a single Pochard but 50 Great Crested Grebe was a good count. <strong><span style=\"color:#FF0000;\">Year list moves on to 116&nbsp;<\/span>and my year list for SHRes 86<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tDuring the week I had a few pleasant surprises at Staunton Harold. A count of 9 Yellowhammers at the feeder on 11th March was an excellent&nbsp;count for sometime. A single male Tree Sparrow still around but the main flock seem to have gone and not seen in any numbers for sometime now. Another year tick for the site, 2<strong> Oystercatchers<\/strong> on the 14th March, <strong>moves the list to 87.&nbsp;<\/strong>I guess the next year ticks will hopefully be some early spring migrants??\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 10th March birding at Rutland Water in a howling gale and snow storm! Spring has taken a backward step for the time being. Despite the snow and freezing wind chill,&nbsp;a few good birds were around but took some finding in the poor conditions. A winter plumaged Slavonian Grebe and a Black-necked Grebe were together [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,18,529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-203","category-birds","category-birdsof2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simplybirdsandmoths.co.uk\/sbam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}