Thankfully the wife's car was ready to collect early doors today so I was able to get out birding. A quick phone call to Ken and after picking him up and grabbing my scope etc it was onto the road to Hatfield Moors. We were out to bag a red-necked grebe if we could.
After parking in the Boston Park car park, we started walking to Ten Acre Lake. Chiffchaff singing in the birches by the path were a welcome addition to the year list. The first of the days grebes were seen on the lake by the car park, nice summer plumaged great crested grebes, as we made our way north passing the Prison Lakes we added little grebe to the day list. At one point we heard what could only be a snake slithering away through the bracken, sadly no sight of it was had. On reaching Tan Acre Lake we scanned the nearer portion of the lake hopefully but the red neck was nowhere in sight. What was evident was the huge number of courting frogs in the water, there were scores of the randy little beggars.
WE decided to head off along the rough track around the lake to see if the bird was at the northern end. A sparrowhawk which flew across the tree line was the first and only raptor of the trip. After finding a suitable viewing point from the path we settled down to scan the lake, it was n't long before we'd found more great crested and little grebes but the red neck was proving elusive. I eventually found the bird mixed in with a small flock of coot, thankfully not an association that lasted. The bird was at the far end of the lake initially but did swim a short way south allowing me to get some exceedingly rubbish pictures with the scope. With both of us having seen the bird it was back to the car and the main road to try and find Huggins Carr. Sadly as this wasn't marked on any map we had and googlemaps wasn't playing ball on the phone we didn't get to look for the black-necked grebe. So we decided to drive back and have a pop at the slav grebe at Swillington Ings, on the off chance it was till there.
After flagrantly ignoring road closed signs in Allerton Bywater we parked up by the Biffa place by the entrance to St Aidan's. The path to the overflow point was longer than I thought but still a hell of a lot shorter than going to the hide at Swillington and making the journey from there. After setting up the scopes we scanned the waters of Bowers Lake expectantly, coot, coot and more coot. There were some wigeon, lapwing, teal and a few goldeneye along with a solitary redshank but no sign of the grebe. I managed to locate the bird as I was watching a goldeneye, after establishing which goldeneye I was watching Ken also got onto the bird and we happily watched it diving for several minutes. Meadow pipit and skylark were also in evidence here so a couple more year ticks for me.
It would have been nice to have known where the black-necked grebe site was as it would have been the first time I've ever had all 5 regular grebes species in one day...as it is this was the first time I'd had 4 of them in a day so I mustn't grumble too much.