Sunday 5.30am 28th June 2009

After reading a blog on seeswood pool in Nuneaton I was amazed at the amount of bird species that were to be seen down there and, not in the mood to carry and set up all of my fishing tackle I decided to grab my binoculars, a 300ml zoom lens for my Canon eos 300 and go and do a bit of bird spotting. So down to seeswood I went. I soon discoverd a bright blue top is not the ideal clothing as the birds seen me coming before I even saw them. I could hear birds all around me but could not see any. I think there is a bit more to this bird watching than what I think. As I slowly made my way around the pool the ground and foliage was laden with dew, as were my jeans. I was quite impressed with The angling club that own rights to the water as they have put a series of duck boards around the areas which are quite boggy, however I still manage to go ankle deep in some of the black gunge which created a curse followed by a flutter in the bush and off went the first bird of the morning I had seen. As i got to the back of the pool in an area that is surrounded by shrubs and bull rushes, I disturbed a flock of small birds, I managed to get a brief look of what I think was a Reed Warbler. Not to be outdone, I thought that maybe if I stay still for a while they may come back. It was quite a misty morning and as I leaned back against a tree I thought that I best see if there was enough light for my camera. The area I was in was quite dark with bushes on one side and a mass of bull rushes on the other, I could not see the pool although I could hear the ducks. Their was also a lot of moo-ing noise from the other side of the bushes. I needed to increase the iso settings on my camera which makes the images a bit grainy but does allow me to take fast photo's in low light. No birds came back and I stayed there until I felt a nudging on my leg. I am not sure what noise came out of my mouth, but it did spook some more of the very secretive, cute clever birds. Looking down their was a great big fluffy German Shepard having a good smell of me followed by a voice in the distance shouting that the dog would'nt hurt me. Moving on now to the back of the pool and more marsh I spotted my first proper bird and it was a Wren flitting to its well concealed nest. I watched it for quite a while but was unable to get a picture of it. As I walked down the otherside of the pool I saw quite a few coots along with a duck that had bright orange eyes and a bit of a scruffy haircut. Not sure what this duck was so I had a look in my book and it turned out to be a Tufted duck. My 300mm zoom lens was no where near big enough to get a decent picture of them. As I neared the road I came across a group of willows which had quite a few birds flitting about in, I thought that if I got a picture I could then Identify them when I got home, No suprise I got the camera to my eyes and all the birds have dissapeared - Gutted. I did hear another chirping and scanning my camera up I caught sight of this sparrow like bird. I quickly Got a picture of it, but it was a long way off. I sat and watched him calling for quite some time and felt quite elated that I had managed to ' spot a bird ' I later discoverd the bird was a Corn Bunting but as my camera was set on a high ISO I couldnt blow the picture up to a decent size, so the picture at the start of this blog is the bird in question.

Grey Wagtail

I climbed over the carpark gate and walked along the road back to my van. As I walked over the sluice I spotted this grey wagtail who kindly stayed still long enogh for me to photograph