A Visit to Wilstone Reservoir Tring 24th September

Still coming down from the excitement and exhaustion of my trip to Tiree in Scotland to see the Yellow bellied Flycatcher I arranged to meet Mark at Wilstone Reservoir this afternoon for some far less exotic and more prosaic birding. 

Our focus of interest was a Great White Egret that had been present for some days and sometimes would come close to the hide that looks out over the reservoir. Unlike my local reservoir at Farmoor, Wilstone Reservoir does not suffer from multiple water activities apart from a few fishermen who are restricted to fishing from the banks. Refreshingly the banks are grassed on their tops as opposed to the monotonous concrete surrounds of Farmoor and there is an extensive area of reeds and muddy shoreline with a spit that is almost an island, extending from the hide, where birds can land and relax. Consequently the number of wildfowl and other birds present is much more than at the now almost continuously disturbed Farmoor Reservoir.

Today there was a large flock of Lapwing on the spit together with a Green Sandpiper and various ducks such as Shoveler, Wigeon, Mallard and Teal. 

Female Shoveler

A Hobby brought excitement, periodically appearing over the reservoir hunting dragonflies at high speed and demonstrating this species superb flying skills. A Chinese Water Deer ventured to the edge of the reedbed, disappearing back into the cover after a while and a Kingfisher perched all too briefly on one of the thin branches that have been especially stuck in the water adjacent to the hide.

 

Sadly the Great White Egret remained, for most of the time, in distant parts of the reservoir and only flew in to approach the hide relatively closely on one occasion.

Great White Egret

Great White Egrets have the most incredibly long thin neck.It looks like a pipe cleaner with a tiny head attached that is barely wider than the neck. Further the neck has a noticeable kink in it about two thirds of the way up and it is as if the neck and head beyond have been added as an afterthought. I can recall when they were rare and one had to travel a long way to see one but now they are breeding on the Somerset Levels and gradually spreading throughout the southern counties of England although still relatively scarce away from their stronghold in Somerset

Apart from the Great White Egret, its smaller cousin, the Little Egret maintained a presence and one of about half a dozen feeding around the reservoir came close to the hide.

Little Egret

While waiting for the ever distant Great White Egret to come closer my attention inevitably wandered to the ducks in front of the hide. They were Gadwall, about forty of them and mostly drakes. This is an infrequent duck on my more familiar Farmoor Reservoir but here they were much more numerous, possibly due to the lack of disturbance

The gathering, initially quiet and swimming around in harmony began making quite a fuss and watching them I realised two things. The drakes were almost exclusively approaching full breeding plumage which seemed very early in the year, as all the other duck species here were still in eclipse plumage and secondly they were wasting no time in displaying with some vigour to a couple of females that appeared to be already paired.

Gadwall pair

It was fascinating to watch the drakes bowing and rising up in the water, making a whistling sound so very different to the peremptory burp like call they usually utter. 

One female in particular, surrounded by five or six amorous males was getting quite agitated at the attention she was receiving and together with her mate was repelling advances with open bill and aggressive lunges. At one stage she became so agitated she even turned on her partner, bill to bill, but soon quitened down.

The amorous drakes continued their courting but it was ultimately futile and after about twenty minutes of frantic activity the whole assembly settled down and life returned to whatever is normal for a Gadwall.