Today it was lovely weather so at lunchtime today I went to Elmley NNR to see what was around. When I got there I had the pace virtually to myself. I am restricted as to where I can go so I spent all my time in the Wellmarsh Hide.The scrape out in front was empty of birds, in fact from what I could see most of it was, but I was happy to sit there and scan around. The few birds I did see I will list at the end, but what I most of was birds of prey. As usual there was plenty of MARSH HARRIERS about, probably low double figures. A KESTREL spent a lot of time hovering over the far hide. But the star of the show was a bird I have been hoping to see for the last 2 years, and today I managed to get good views of it, it is one of my top 5 bird species, that bird was a male HEN HARRIER. I couldn't believe my luck when it started to fly low across the scape, whatever I saw after that was a bonus, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, hoping it might come back, but no such luck. There was also plenty of COMMON BUZZARDS around, at one sweep from one side to the other I saw 8. There was some farmyard birds running around the car park, they was 1 Turkey, 1 Chicken, and 8 Helmeted Guinea Fowl,and at the bottom of the reserve entrance was 6 red Legged Partridge. Total birds seen was as follows: MARSH HARRIER, HEN HARRIER, COMMON BUZZARD, KESTREL, G/B/B/GULL, HERRING GULL, GREYLAG GEESE, CANADA GEESE,LITTLE EGRET, LITTLE GREBE, MALLARD, SHELDUCK, WIGEON, COOT, MOORHEN,RED LEGGED PARTRIDGE, LAPWING, OYSTERCATCHER, GOLDEN PLOVER, CURLEW, C/CROW, ROOK, W/PIGEON, STARLING, ROBIN, BLUE TIT, C/CROW, ROOK.


My "Bird of the Day" is simple, the male ** HEN HARRIER **