15 September 2011

THE SEABIRD HAS LANDED....I REPEAT, THE SEABIRD HAS LANDED!

As the title of this post nods towards, the much wanted seabird at KMR happened and excuse my language (no don't) but it was a fucking mega shitting crippling bastard!
Ok, maybe it wasn't THAT big, but for me, someone who gets more thrills from an inland seabird than a necrophiliac gets from discovering a 17 day matured corpse in the boot of a ditched Ford Mondeo down some lonely lovers lane, this was immense!
I'd been dispatched on a work related mission to Evesham in that cider swilling region of the midlands mid-morning. I'd chosen to take my own motor for the mission, knowing that with my optics in the boot, if the pager would 'squeak' with some news from down that way, I'd be prepared...
I arrived at my intended destination around 12:40pm and after the obligatory paperwork shit, I was sat in the motor awaiting the parcel to be processed and passed onto me. I sparked up a fag and had a quick gleg of the pager. The first message that flashed up was this -

As any hardened patch watcher can sympathise with, my reaction to that sort of message is equivalent to the 'big boys' reading about a Black-bellied Petrel loafing on the sea off St Mary's for 6hrs before being chewed by a Joe Pender tagged Blue Shark!
For the next 95 minutes, my motor kinda resembled a piece of space debris re-entering the earths atmosphere as I spanked it at pace along the M42, destination Notts!
After very rapidly off-loading the collected package, my obligatory unpaid lunch break began I guess, so I tanked it to the rezza. Upon arrival, I was directed by some cunt that it was showing well from the visitor centre jetty...And so it was! Get fucking in! Fuck the numerous Scoters, Kittiwakes and that L-t Duck that I'd previously bagged down there, this was the real deal!


Well, after ten minutes, it suddenly dawned on me that it was actually Thursday, not Saturday/Sunday, so I begrudgingly headed back to work. Needless to say, at 5pm, like a rat up a drain pipe, I caned it back to king's Mill and spent a good few hours soaking up some proper vintage patch quality with the majority of the KMR regulars -



Even one of the major D*rbyshite flushing photographers was on scene (ya know, the one mentioned in a previous post) and did his best to get stuck in some squishy water side vegetation in order to get that 'ONE' shot!

I reckon this takes me to 180 species for King's Mill Reservoir.............not bad for a grotty inland urban reservoir hey?!!

Roll on the Sab's.........................

PREVIOUS KING'S MILL RESEVOIR RECORDS OF GREY PHALAROPE -

1870 - no date (shot)
1885 - October 17th (shot)

1 comment:

  1. Nice one Dunnock. Still need Grey Phal for my patch but at least I got one for my Surrey year list this evening. Couldn't get close to the bugger though....

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