Desperate measures...

The luxury of lakes within the reserve boundary is much envied here at the Lodge, especially with the BTO notching up a bit of a beast with a Mandarin.

So, with our challenge getting off to a slow but perfectly formed start, we were forced to find the gaps in the trees to view to locally famous Derek White's Eggs GP. A fabulous site with an impressive list of watery birds - the only trouble is, it is over a mile away from the Lodge. But without it, we'd be stuffed from the outset. Thanks to ducks etc being quite big, we've scoped Wigeon, Gadwell, Pochard, Teal, Little Grebe and a Little Egret. More lunchtimes will be spent scanning the site as wader passage starts. The smaller the bird though, the greater the challenge. We've got some ideas on that front, so watch this space...
And lets not worry about the standard of photography - it's a Little Egret by the way.

Mandarin OTL

Mandarin Duck On The List as of yesterday morning; note its wary, just-arrived-from-Manchuria posture. It is a good job this competition isn't about photograph quality though! Chiffchaff was today's addition; it looked pretty drab but unfortunately I couldn't turn it into tristis even with the help of Chiff-guru Greg Conway.

That takes the all-important scores on the doors to 82 (bird) species. We're well short of the kind of quality our oppos have achieved... fortunately there are no bonus points for rarities!

The Lodge recording area

Here is the Lodge boundary. However, as it overlooks the Ivel valley we can see a long way from its high bits.

Quality not quantity at The Lodge

The Lodge year started with a bang with a Coues' Arctic Redpoll being found amongst the roaming redpoll flocks on 5th (luckily found by four staff members). Only the third Bedfordshire record after two in 1991 on Wavendon Heath. Waxwings have been frequent visitors too with a peak count of 23 on 4th. Now to fill in those gaps...

Nunnery recording area

For the record (and because folk have been asking!) here's a map of the Nunnery recording area. Note that it straddles a vice county boundary, which is significant for biological recording. For larger, mobile taxa (that'll be birds and mammals then), the rules are 'on or from' the marked area.

Otters

Finally managed to get down to the Nunnery reserve to contribute to the 2011 challenge. Unfortunately, I rather doubt I added any new species (although I'm not sure anyone's written down Hawthorn yet?). Birds included a great flock of about 100 Bramblings plus personal year-ticks of Lesser Redpoll and Marsh Tit. The real highlight, however, was watching at least two Otters on the river. The adult pictured here was seen just briefly, running to the river, but a juvenile was watched for an extended period at close range; it seemed to be enjoying playing with an empty beer can!

Still failing to see the Barn Owl for my personal Nunnery List - must make the effort at dawn or dusk one day...

And they're off!

BTO staff were out in force (well, at least 4 of them, anyway) on New Year's Day, eager to get the Nunnery Lakes 2011 bird list up and running. Mike Toms, Dave Leech, Dawn Balmer and Neil Calbrade all texted me their best offerings, which included Woodcock, Little Egret, Goosander, Little Grebe (infrequent on the reserve, especially when most of the lakes are under ice) and otter.

I returned from 'up north' to my house on the edge of the reserve late last night; no Tawny Owl to greet me so my first Lakes year ticks had to wait until this morning. An extensive tour of duty with Dave added a few things the team hadn't connected with over the weekend: Barn Owl, Nuthatch and the Pink-footed Goose that's been around for a couple of months - the latter a big relief as this would have been a difficult species to catch up with had this individual moved on as we feared it might.

My BirdTrack list for this morning totalled 52 species, exactly the same number Mike and Dave recorded on New Year's Day. The overall total will have to wait until Wednesday when I'm back in the office and can combine everyone's records but we must be up to 60 or thereabouts.