Red-crested Pochard #10

Another crisp winter morning and we headed down towards the Gateway Information Centre of the Cotswolds Water Park which is an area of over 40 square miles. The idea was to get some information about where we needed to go to have a chance of seeing the Red-crested Pochards. I had some information from a website, but it's always good to get first hand knowledge if you can...or so I thought. Unfortunately for us, the info centre was closed and all that was open was the Gateway café with servers who tried to help, but in the end just sold us a map for £1 and told us that a duck symbol signified a nature reserve and to start there!

So, armed with our map and my internet knowledge, we headed down Spine Road towards Neigh Bridge Country Park, which ended up being just a little car park - but this was good enough for us, and was close enough to pit 44 which is where some pochards were seen yesterday. 
It was a good job that we decided to check out the lake closest to the car park first, as within 3 minutes of arriving we found a large flock of around 60 birds feeding amongst four Mute swans, and they were nearly all Red-crested pochards! How lucky was that?  They are handsome looking birds with their orange heads and red beaks. 
We walked around the lake to try and get a closer view as they were quite far away to start with and bathed in strong sunlight. Eventually they came quite a bit closer and I was able to get some shots I was happy with. 
On the way back we found some siskins at the top of some elder trees but they weren't for coming down very far - a shot is in extras with a close up of one of the pochards - a lifer for me. (Until 2 days ago, I'd not even heard of them).
We went to pit 44 for a longer walk, but there were very few areas around the lake that you got any view of the water as it was private property beyond the fence. So pleased that they seem to have located to the other lake. 
On our way back to the cottage we dropped in at Broadway Tower for a little walk as it was still very sunny. A thoroughly successful day all round. Later this evening our visitors will arrive, so I will catch up with commenting once they have gone next week.