A beautiful morning to be up on the tops with full clear skies and sunshine on a SW>4 at 8 degrees.
First sighting this morning was 5 Whooper Swans way over in the far NW corner of the water where they stayed throughout and still there as I left at 1000 hrs.
As I was scoping the swans 2 Sand Martin flew just over the top of them skimming the water as they left >SW down the Calder valley. If I had not been scoping the swans at the time they would have gone through un-noticed. These were 3 weeks earlier than any of my previous records though others have been reported around the area.
The Ringed Plover was showing well this morning and one of the pair of Oystercatchers was copulating. Just 3 Curlew and a few Lapwing with no Redshank back at this site as yet but imminent.
At 0940 hrs, the familiar sound of Pink Footed Geese, contact calls, was heard and looked up to find them immediately overhead with a single skein of 120 high and >WNW. I was unable to get the full skein in as I had a Canon 400m fixed lens on which I have just purchased as the Canon 70-200mm I was using was nowhere near good enough for reservoir work. The 400mm coupled to my Canon 7d mk2 1.6 crop factor camera brings it up to 640mm. A good finish to a splendid morning and good to see DJS up on the top road and speak via phone as he scoped in all this mornings goodies.
All good thing come to an end and tomorrow the light SSE wind is back threatening rain and fog but starting off at 8 degrees so at least it will be warm water coming down.
BS