Smew - Holme Pierrepont

Had a visit to holme pierrepont on my bike on wednesday, as i only had half a day working with the wildlife trust. It was a pretty grim day but there was still a lot to be seen. There was a lot of low lying fog which was especially evident over the water, which made viewing difficult but looked very cool.

On the ride down to the watersports centre, there wasn't much to see apart from common wildfowl and gulls, though i did pick up on a few Common Gulls. I rode over the slalom course to have a look at the lock, and as expected there was a group of lapwings sat on the moorings. I counted around 65 birds, and it was quite nice to see them relatively close up. Not much else was about however, other than a good number of Cormorants.

I then rode across to the Rowing Course to see what wildfowl was about. It was around 70% frozen, with the rest of the ice very thin, so pretty much thawed. This also meant that the birds were a lot more widely distributed. A lot of commoner birds were about, but there were some hidden gems. Highlights included Goldeneye, of which i counted 14 birds, and they don't seem too shy here, quite content with watching you from not too far away, but any sudden movement and down they go. There were also around 25 Gadwall dotted about, as well as a couple of Pochard, but the jewel in the crown had to be a female SMEW which was about as far away as it could have been from me, but i still got some good views. This is my first 'lifer' of the year so i watched for a while, but aside from standing up on the ice to flap its wings, it didnt really do much but just sit there. Still, i got to appreciate it and compare it to my previous experience of other female sawbills. Very similar, but a LOT smaller.

Otherwise there wasn't too much about, i got a final count of around 12 Common Gull, including a nice 1st winter bird, as well as a couple of Greater Black Backs flying over while i was eating a sandwich at the Skylarks reedbed. I also saw a few wagtails including my first Grey Wagtail of the year.