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Welcome to my blog. If you live in Surrey and birding is your obsession (to get out of bed at some ridiculously early time of the morning, no matter what the weather, to go and look at birds isn't normal behaviour, believe me) and you're still a bit of a novice (like me) then, hopefully, this blog is for you.



Friday 23 July 2010

SPYNES MERE SURPRISE


Having only had a sinus operation the day before, I wasn't supposed to venture out on Thursday evening. But I'm glad I did. I felt pretty good, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk. I was only going to go over to the Holmethorpe Lagoons and back, but by the time I got there I felt fit enough go further on and ended up at Spynes Mere.

On the way, I saw a few House Martin and House Sparrow, plus a Yellowhammer amd Whitethroat, but it was just a walk without much expectation of seeing anything out of the ordinary.



Once at Spynes Mere, I was counting the number of Lapwing there were on the sandbar, when... hang on, what's this? A wader. At first I thought it was a Greenshank, only because one had been sighted the day before. But this wasn't a Greenshank. I sent Graham James a text, explaining this wader had a reddish front, and after a brief call back he decided it was worth coming over to have a look.

To his, and my delight, it was the first Black-Tailed Godwit of the year at the Holmethorpe Sand Pits, and my 142nd species for Surrey in 2010 - my first new sighting for more than a month.

1 comment:

  1. Well done in finding the black-tailed godwit, Neil. It was only fifth one recorded at Holmethorpe.

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