Mockmill Sewer

Mockmill Sewer - 0930hrs - cloudy, chilly, sw3 - A local patch is a marvellous thing and allows you to discover and have an intimate knowledge of a birding area close to home that reaches the parts that other birding sites can never hope to achieve. Mockmill Sewer is one such location; a slither of wetness that runs between two storm beach ridges from the airport fields behind the 200 foot `mirror` out onto the dry stony, Desert at Lade.
I don`t visit the sewer as often as I should as its a fair old slog out across the shingle to get to, but once there its one of those places that you think must turn up something good one day, and if it does, for sure I`ll find it, because in six years I`ve never seen another birder out there!
Today was fairly duff with just a few singing Dunnocks and Wrens, a couple of Song Thrushes and flushed Snipe. My first winter down here 3 Short-eared Owls regularly hunted the sewer and I`ve had some pretty impressive falls of warblers and thrushes during the autumn. Scarcities have included Gropper, Dartford Warbler and Rouzel, but I feel sure that one day it will yield an Aquatic Warbler in the sedges or maybe a Roller on a fencepost, well I can dream...

 Mockmill Sewer - a boggy tangle of sedge, reed, bulrush and tussock grass between two gorse, bramble and blackthorn ridges

Barney loves Mockmill Sewer as it allows him to indulge in one of his favourite pastimes - chasing rabbits. But fear not dear reader, carnage rarely prevails as he is the most pathetic of hunting terriers.

RSPB - Called in at the visitor centre this afternoon, more for a natter than anything else. The Long-tailed Duck was still on Burrowes and a Black-necked Grebe on Christmas Dell. Over the road the usual Bitterns, Smews and Great White Egret present. Also year ticked three-wheel birder in Dennis`s hide trying to snap the long-tailed.