3 Ticks and 4 dips..could be better..or could it?

I was away from Uni in Southampton for the weekend spending some time in Beds some in Notts some in Leics and some in Rutland!!

Arrived home on Thursday and after spending 7 seconds dumping my washing in the house I headed off to see the RBFly near Luton.

Weather wasn't great and after a while of waiting with no sign I decided to go looking in the woods. After lots of tits and finches making me skip a heart beat I got very brief (rubbish) views of the flycatcher silhouetted against the sun (or 'orible cloud that it was behind) and did not see it again after that but a great lifer!

After the rubbish views on thursday I couldnt help but go back on Friday and the fact that Eddie Taylor was going aswell meant I couldn't resist...so off I went again. With better weather I hoped for a better chance to get a nice photo. Nother amazing but nice stuff:

On the way back we stopped at clophill and enjoyed distant but nice views of 4 bean geese, another lifer for us!

But it all went down hill from there..

Waking up after a 21st birthday was not as painful as I had thought and any hint of a hangover was shaken off when reports of the penduline tit reapearing at Attenborough NR 6 miles from where we were in central Nottingham!!

Ed and I headed there after dropping a mate at the, (frustratingly hard to find), train station.

It hadn't been seen since flying high off north so we decided to have a quick look and head on to see the lesser scaup at Holme Pierrpoint (Dip1). After searching for some time we could not locate it for definate, Possible female scaup, and was very small but we were not sure if it was a drake or female leser scaup there as this could have been it..? (dip2)

Next we headed to rutland waters to try and see the GNDiver, which we didn't, but instead saw a lovely smew which was great. Another lifer for me! Also where here we saw a water rail swim by, I managed a few quick shots but nothing good:

I thought the blur on the last one was quite 'interesting'.

This brightened things up abit!

Until we couldn't find the GNDiver (dip3).

Going on how the twitches had gone so far we threw in the towel and decided not to go and try for the iceland gull and eyebrook!

4th Dip was the waxwings at the lodge with them being seen lots up untill I came home- typical!!

Still was a great weekend and a RBFly in beds, it doesn't get much better than that!!