Sutton Bingham - Sat 19 Mar

So far March has been a pretty slow month, with the only addition to the patch year list being a near adult Yellow-legged Gull that was present in the gull roost on Tuesday of this week. That all changed today when I found myself with enough time to pop in to the reservoir on the way to work this morning. Parking on the northern causeway I scanned the West Pool...nothing, scanned the main reservoir...nothing, checked the pontoons off the Sailing Club..."insert expletive here" an Avocet! I certainly was not expecting that this morning, a patch tick (and I think only the third record for Sutton Bingham and first for about thirty years). I quickly sent out text messages to the usual crowd but to the best of my knowledge only one connected before the bird was flushed by the arriving sailors and flew south just before 8.00am. Needless to say I tried to get at least some sort of record shot with the rubbish camera on my phone (a bad workman and all that!):

 

Anyway, I could not hang around as I needed to get off to work, but what a start to the weekend, an Avocet on my local patch...result!