Juvenile female Ruff, Alston Reservoirs (Mike Watson) CLICK IMAGES FOR LIGHTBOX
AT LAST I FOUND SOMETHING INTERESTING AT ALSTON, it’s been a while. A lovely juvenile female Ruff was feeding on the wetland among lapwings yesterday evening. There was a dark and threatening mauve sky to the west, a wall of thunderstorms and maybe the Ruff pitched down at Alston rather than head into it? It was still there when I checked this morning, after the terrific lightning storm last night, but I was surprised to hear that it had moved to the No.#1 reservoir a couple of hours later and even better it was showing down to a few metres. Gavin Thomas commented that he was probably the first human it had seen? I reckon I must have been the second then, it even walked right up to me and checked out my lens hood. The closest I have ever been to a Ruff, a simply awesome experience in bright sunshine now. It was working the stone banks of the reservoir catching lots of tiny flies in the spindrift of the waves lapping the shore.
I was thinking about anniversaries today. Yesterday evening’s exquisite juvenile greenshank at Alston was 45 years after my first, at Leighton Moss in 1975 and the ruff is only a couple of weeks short of the 40th anniversary of my first Ruffs, at Voss in Norway in August 1980. They are scarce in East Lancs and this one is only my fourth in the ELOC recording area. The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly made me appreciate local rarities!