Garganey

The most exciting birding and wildlife sightings in my opinion are mostly unexpected and generally therefore fortuitous in nature and this mornings events just reinforced that as far as I am concerned.

Just before 10:00hrs I flushed a pair of Garganey feeding on vegetation on the River Calder near industrial Brighouse, an unlikely setting to say the least. I contacted DJS immediately as the pair flew west towards Brighouse in the direction of EGP.

I bombed back to my car and drove home to collect my camera and then returned to an area on the river just east of the town centre and decided to leg it along the river bank on the off chance that the pair might have landed further upstream as there were decent numbers of Mallard and the odd Canada Goose on the river at the time.

As it turned out the Garganey had flown about half a mile west along the river just east of Brighouse, so I got on all fours and scrambled along the riverbank and managed to rattle a volley of shots off before the Garganey took flight once again and flew in a westerly direction high over the town centre following the path of the river.

No apologies for the number of photos of these cracking birds

A few minutes later on the same stretch of water 3 Dipper appeared from the direction of Brighouse and 2 males (presumably) started singing and chasing one another before posturing on the riverbank.

Calderdale birding does not get much better than this!

As an afterthought I have enclosed another photo of the Garganey which were feeding close to the riverbank in a not dissimilar manner to Teal.