Visit to Rutland Water Nature Reserve 28th March 2013

Visit to Rutland Water Nature Reserve 28th March 2013

After we left Lakenheath Fen we drove up to the Midlands where we stayed at the Barnsdale Lodge Hotel, a very comfortable hotel that we had stayed at previously. It is a bit pricey normally but they do good offers for some dates and we took advantage of this to break up our journey back to Manchester a little bit. We chose it for its close proximity to Rutland Water Nature Reserve where we hoped to see the female Osprey that has arrived back first from Africa and is already checking its nest out. We wondered if, with only a few hours available to us, we would get lucky and see the bird?

We started out at the Egleton Visitor Centre where we bought our tickets and were immediately disappointed to see that Lagoon 1 which is directly outside the visitor centre and which had been the location for several interesting recent sightings was being dug up and with diggers, boats and people around, there were was never going to be naything to see. Cheesed off at this (there was no warning on their web site) we headed off to the left to the Redshank Hide where we saw a variety of water birds including Shelduck, Teal, Wigeon, Little and Great Crested Grebe, Pochard, Mallard and Heron and Gulls etc. We were hoping to perhaps see some of the Divers that had supposedly been around for a while but the path down to the Grebe and Osprey Hides was really muddy and to get beyond that to the deeper lagoons was going to be impossible because the area was pretty much inches deep in water everywhere. I recall this being tricky last year but it looked even more waterlogged this time. So not only was Lagoon 1 out of bounds but also Lagoons 3 and 4 were impossible for us to reach either.

We headed back to the visitor centre and then took the path to the right of it in the hope that there might be something of interest  there. We went as far as the Snipe Hide and then the Harrier Hide but there was nothing unusual so we decided to drive around to the Lyndon Visitor Centre on the south side of the water where we figured we might be lucky enough to see an Osprey.

When we got there we were informed that a bird was around but that it had been elsewhere all day fishing and it hadn’t been seen for a while. We walked down to the Waderscrape Hide which was also very muddy and when we entered this hide there was a couple who had been waiting for ages to get a glimpse of the Osprey. As he left, the chap said that he seemed to have the knack of making birds disappear so it didn’t look good for us that nobody had seen the bird recently. We settled down anyway and we scanned the skies for any signs of Osprey but there was no sign. The nest was also bare. A few minutes passed and my eye drifted from the nest to the perching pole that is only a few metres from it and at the same height and to my complete amazement there was a big bird perched on it. A few seconds later and I had my scope of a female Osprey and it perched looking around from side to side. We watched for five or ten minutes before the bird took to the air but if we thought we were going to be disappointed with the departure of the bird we were to be proven wrong as she glided along in the sky showing well and wheeling around a bit. After a while a big white bird – possible a gull or a heron – seemed to be following it but whatever the situation eventually the Osprey flew off into the distance. In all we probably got a good fifteen minutes viewing the bird both at rest and in flight and we got good scoped views as well. Just as the bird flew off a family came into the hide and asked us if we had seen the Osprey ? How like birding is this and how many times has someone said to us, in the same circumstances, “you should have been here a few minutes ago” ? Birding needs luck !

Bird Sightings : Rutland Water : Egleton Hide

Bird Sightings : Rutland Water : Lyndon Hide