Ripley Farm Reservoir - Sun 25 Jan

When news broke of a Killdeer on a small farm reservoir a few days ago I was, obviously, tempted. However, I didn't really have the opportunity to go and see it until today when our initial Sunday morning plans fell by the wayside and that freed me up to make the journey to this interesting site just to the south of Ringwood.

I parked in the village of Avon, along with several other birders, and made the mile-long walk along a farm track towards the location of the target bird. Along the way I had a Red Kite fly over and then had some decent, if a little distant, views of a White-tailed Eagle...surely this was a good omen?

On arriving at the reservoir, which was really just a fairly large pond, I was helped on to the bird and was treated to some cracking views of the Killdeer, a Nearctic wader I hadn't really expected to see in the UK, and it was a little beauty.

There was plenty of other bird activity with several Egyptian Geese and Shelduck plus other commoner wildfowl, however, a Little Gull was a bonus year tick as I first saw it on water before it vanished whilst I was looking at other things but it then flew back in a few minutes later, showing really well in flight.

Having had my fill of the Killdeer I decided to head back home with the aim of getting back in time for lunch!