A Sunday Morning Twitch.

As soon as I saw that Sunday morning might be fine I decided to go over to Clayhanger Marsh to see if the Hoopoe was still about.My last twitch was to go to Hereford a year or two ago for the Bee-eaters and they had been predated the day before so I was not confident the Hoopoe would be still there.

Parked up in Clayhanger just after 8.00AM in fine weather.I was not sure where to go exactly but I knew I had to cross the recreation ground and walk the path to a bridge over a stream.The good news was I found the bridge pretty easily but the bad news was there were no other birders about.Had it gone?????

After a while a birder appeared but he said he'd been there from 6.00AM and had searched everywhere and could not find it.Oh dear!!!!!!! A bit depressed I walked along the raised bank towards the slag heaps scanning as I went along.

I soon spotted 3 Wheatears and 2 Mistle Thrushes in the field near some gorse bushes.But what was that a bit to the left? Yes!! Yes!! it was the Hoopoe.A life tick.How good is that and it was me who had spotted that morning.

Soon a small group of birders enjoyed watching from the bank although to be fair it was a bit far off.Annoyingly not much later on 5 birders appeared from all directions actually in the field trying to get close (only one was a photographer).It of course flew off.It was found again a bit later but was even further away.

So what about some shots.Well I took some but because of the distance they are either crappographs or for record purposes only shots.For once as seeing the bird was more important that getting shots I don't really care.If you want to see some great shots of this bird go to Dave Hutton's Seeswood pools website.