Far Ings 5-1-13

Today Jacqui and myself decided on a walk up to the local patch to see if we could bump our year lists up a bit,which we did with some of the more commoner birds such has Common Redshank,Common Snipe,Shelduck ect but my main target was the male Smew and Jacqui's was Waxwing.
We walked along the Humber bank up to Reeds Hotel where we could see a lot of Waxwing sitting in the top of the tree,some where flycatching and others where simply going down into the Old Cement works for the Guelder Rose,so Jacqui set off for a closer look whilst I went off down to Bridge pit to look for the Smew but he wasn't present so I headed off for the Waxwings and a scan of Hotel pit which the Smew also favours but not today.
With brilliant views of the Waxwings I managed to catch back up with Jacqui and we headed for Chowder Ness which was very quiet apart from a few Curlew and Wigeon but we where getting hungry so we sat and ate our sandwiches and a welcomed hot coffee to wash them down with.
We then made our way for Ness pit via the New pits where the long staying female Red-crested Pochard was still present on New pit 3,we the walk through the wood and reached Ness hide which was again quiet but we still sat around until dusk in the hope a Bittern would give us a flyby but to no avail,with the temperature now quickly dropping we called it a day and headed off home,but a we enjoyed our day searching just about every bush on the reserve because you just never know what you will find.