After thirty years of birding, I was forced to stop ten years ago because various aspects of the hobby were making my bipolar symptoms a lot worse. I missed so much about birding, the birds, the community and the identification challenges. Ten years on and my bipolar symptoms appear to be managed a little better with some new medication and I decided that I was going to return to birding, but maybe do things a bit different this time. Focussing more on local areas and not dashing all over the UK and Ireland to twitch rare birds, well, unless something particularly interesting to me turns up!
No sooner had the thought entered my head and I’d bought myself a new pair of binoculars and a spotting scope. This had all the hallmarks of an imminent manic episode, time will tell I guess.
My eldest daughter, Shannon, had been asking me to take her out birding for some time, this was great. We planned our first time back birding and decided to spend a morning bird watching around Derwentwater in the Lake District.
Kath dropped us at the Chinese Bridge on the southern end of the lake. Our plan was to make our way around the southern and eastern shores back into Keswick (eventually)!
No sooner did we set foot off the Chinese Bridge and our first interesting bird of the day flew overhead. It was a very spectacular drake Mandarin Duck. We found it again a bit later on, dabbling on the lake. A lot of things have changed in the last ten years it seems, Mandarin Ducks used to be reasonably scarce in the north of the county, however, now they have become much more established in certain areas. Despite their feral status (category C on the British List) they are always exciting to see.
As we passed an area of marshy bog, we were treated to the reeling song of at least three Grasshopper Warblers. They were in the company of Meadow Pipit, Reed Bunting, Chiffchaff and Willow Warblers. On the shoreline a pair of Common Sandpipers gave us nice views. This gave me opportunity to practice my rather rusty digiscoping skills. For a first attempt for a long while, I was pretty pleased with this one.
On the lake we saw multiple Red-breasted Mergansers, Mallard and some feral Barnacle Geese and Greylag Geese. The oak woodlands were alive with singing birds, including Willow Warblers, Blackcaps, Pied Flycatchers and Common Redstarts. The highlight was seeing Shannon watching her first male Redstart, she was definitely wowed!
It had been a really good morning’s birding, one of many more to come we hope…
