Kath dropped me off at Craig's just after 0745hrs and we soon left and were on our way to Penrith. We had a quick stop off at Penrith and were then on our way to Farnham Gravel Pits near Knaresborough. It was a tense drive until around 0930hrs when news on my pager confirmed that the Pacific Diver was still present. TFFT! After a fairly traumatic drive through Harrogate we found the car park at the Gravel Pits, paid our tenner and legged it to the waters edge. There was a fair few birders present, and it was not long before we were watching the UK's first (and possibly the Western Palearctic) Pacific Diver. Again TFFT!
I was quite amazed how distinctive this bird was. It was a very small diver, appearing not much bigger than the Great Crested Grebes that were also present on the Gravel Pits!
We got excellent views of this bird as it ranged all around the gravel pit, the bird would show to 10ft or so at times. I managed to see all of the distinguishing features on this bird including the vent strap!
This bird was great to watch, I even managed some reasonable record shots with my digiscope set up!
Aside from the bird in question, it was nice to see some familiar faces, that I had not seen for a while! We continued watching the bird until about 1600hrs. Amazingly we had been watching the bird for over five hours! Well we got our moneys worth that's for sure!
We were on our way south to Norfolk for the weekend, hoping for some more rares to feed our rarity obsessed mental condition!
We arrived at Holme in Norfolk just after 1900hrs, Craig set his tent up on the luxury camp site (well a field with a small shed in it anyway!). We then found a pub for some food!
The pub was the Lifeboat Inn at Thornham. The food was excellent and the beer went down well too!
1 comment:
The food and beer was fantastic, shame about the company though ;)
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