Sunday at Sandwell...

So after the exertions of Saturday's trip to Norfolk, I was in the mood for a relaxed trip down to the Valley for a look around. After arriving I spent about an hour chatting to some other volunteers that I hadn't seen in a while and eventually headed out to see what was about.

The usual suspects were in the usual places - wigeon on the river bend, siskin doing circles over the reedbed area, teal up river a little way - but with the exciting additions of a couple of great spotted woodpeckers and a sparrowhawk hurtling through the bushes next to the Marsh Screen. I ambled up to the feeding station where again all the regular candidates were laying their claims to the food, great tits, blue tits, a willow tit, chaffinches, greenfinches, bullfinches, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, woodpigeons and squirrels.

Dunnock - RSPB Sandwell Valley - Feb. 2012 - Mike Ixer

While admiring the various scuffles which were breaking out around the table, I got a text asking if I could come down to the hide to help identify a mystery water bird - intriguing!

I raced down and entered the hide to find people gathered around looking at the area of open (non-frozen) water to the right of the hide. "We think it is a smew, but we're not 100%". I looked through the scope and sure enough there was a redhead smew swimming around quite happily amongst a pair of goldeneye and it's cousins, the 18+ goosander.

Smew - RSPB Sandwell Valley - Feb. 2012 - Mike Ixer

After an afternoon of unexpectedly manning the hide - I had talked to enough people and admired the bird enough to come to the conclusion that it was probably an immature male and that it was the first in the Valley for about a decade (or so I'm told).

So after that excitement I wandered back up to the temporary centre again via the feeding station and added reed bunting and coal tit to the days feeder species. It was the first coal tit I had seen around the feeders for a while - cold weather driven them further south maybe?

Anyway, that was a great way to waste a Sunday - couldn't recommend it more!