A spontaneous decision was made at 5.00am today when Tristan woke up and within half an hour I was heading east towards London to twitch an American Buff-bellied Pipit. The drive was pretty horrendous with heavy rain and a lot of standing water and on at least one occasion I seriously wondered what I was doing! I arrived at Queen Mother Reservoir in Berkshire (just off Junction 14 of the M25) just before 8.00am and duly signed in and paid for my day permit. It was just about light so I got on my waterproof coat, grabbed my optics and set off. I was the first on site today, but it didn't take long for other birders to arrive.
As I reached the path that follows the edge of the reservoir I soon located the Long-tailed Duck that was also present, and I was hopeful that this would prove to be a good omen. A couple of Pied Wagtails were on the water's edge and a couple of pipits were also seen, but the light was poor and before long one flew off strongly back towards the Sailing Club. Eventually the second pipit gave itself up to identification, and was disappointingly a Meadow Pipit!
This was not going to be as easy as I had hoped, though when a Waxwing flew south I again felt optimistic that this would be my day. A couple of Egyptian Geese were year ticks and provided a flicker of interest as the rare Yank continued to evade all the birders on site.
Time was against me as I had promised to be home by 12.30, so at just gone 10.00am I returned to the car, thoroughly fed up and soaked to the skin, and I had a rather unpleasant drive back home in wet clothes and in more poor weather. To rub salt in the wound, as I arrived back home the pager went off alerting me that the pipit was showing well...shame it wasn't doing that two hours earlier!
UK List for 2012 ended up at 242 species.
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