Spotted Crake at Ingrebourne Valley

Today (23/09/17) I hoped to see a Spotted Crake that had been there for the past week. I tried Thursday and had no luck so hoped to find it today.

As we started to walk down a path a flock of Blue, Great and Long Tailed Tits was jumping around in the tress with a Gold Crest amongst them. When we got there it was see two minutes ago and a few minutes later my dad found it behind a willow tree. It started coming close but disappeared again.

I started looking for some other birds in the pool. The ducks are starting to come back because there was more teal. At the back near the mud there was some green sandpipers and 20 Snipe. I’d never seen that many Snipe before in one go! There was a lot of mute swans as well as Canada, Greylag Geese flying in. In the distant trees two Ring Necked Parakeets was squawking mad.

We then watch the Spotted Crake feeding in the reads. Very happy to see the Crake, makes up for Thursday and nice seeing very close as well.