Birding Group Visit to Carsington Water : 25th February 2014

Birding Group Visit to Carsington Water : 25th February 2014

Carsington Water was a first for me although the birding group have been there before. On the down side, although the distance isn’t too great, the roads are so slow that it took us two hours to get there. As it happens it was well worth the travel as we managed to get a life tick in the shape of a Great Northern Diver !

After a brief stop at the visitor centre we drove on to the Sheepwash car park. We parked up there and walked north to the path that leads down to the Sheepwash Bird Hide. Just outside this hide there is a little spit of land and on this were a group of Lapwings. As we sat there various birds came and went to and from this spit. These included Redshank, Curlew, Pied Wagtail, Moorhen and Oystercatcher. On the water were Tufted Ducks and Pochards and fair numbers of Black-headed Gulls. There were also good numbers of Cormorants and Great Crested Grebes. While we scanned these, one of the group spotted a rather larger bird, sitting low in the water. This turned out to be a Great Northern Diver – a life tick for me ! We stayed at this hide for a while and when the bird eventually disappeared we thought we would walk back to the car park and then followed the path past there down to the Lane End Hide. Here we got much closer views of the Diver and it was happy to remain floating around in the sun giving us splendid views. Eventually it returned to its usual practice of diving as soon as you had relocated it. There may actually have been two GNDs because one came up so far away from where our bird went down that it was hard to imagine that it could be just the one bird.

When this bird eventually disappeared under the water we walked on down towards the visitor centre. As we did so some of the group saw Bramblings though I missed them. A blind along this path had a bird table close to and from here we had the curious sight of a leucistic Coal Tit. Also we had Bullfinch and Great and Blue Tits and Chaffinches.

It is quite a long walk up and down an undulating path but eventually you get to another hide. This one is of the modern family friendly type – over hot to the extent that you bins steam up as soon as you got in. I could not stand much of this so I looked out on to the lake from the outside. After a brief stop for a cup of tea at the visitor centre we returned to this hide and it was much quieter and they had opened some doors to let air in making it bearable. From here we saw good numbers of Snipe and a few Teal and Wigeon. At the bird table there were frequent visits from Willow Tits and other small birds.

We returned back to the car park and stopped again, briefly, at the Lane End hide where we again got good views of the Great Northern Diver. This one sighting had made all the driving worth the effort and we ended the day well pleased.

How we got there

The route we took was through Macclesfield and then down to Leek and Ashbourne and then over to Carsington Water. We really shouldn’t have done this because it is so slow. If the weather is ok it would be much better to go over to Buxton from Macclesfield and drop down through the moors which at least avoids a lot of 30mph restrictions that we had going round the outside of the moors. We came back this way and it was much better. You can park at the Visitor Centre but this is quite expensive (£2.50 for 2 hours and £4.50 for a full day). There is a cafe and toilets here and the RSPB hide is quite close to it. Instead we parked at the Sheepwash Car Park further along which is about £2.50p for the full day. The disadvantage here is that you have to walk all the way back whereas if you park at the visitor centre you can walk up to Sheepshank and back, stop for lunch and then have a bit of a walk around the other side of the Visitor Centre.

Bird Sightings : Carsington Water