Dipping last weekend

Having dipped on the Thornton Res Redstart on the Friday, last Saturday (19th) was entirely taken up by an all-in day out at the Rugby again. Copious volumes of beer and wine made for a very lazy evening and very little chance of getting up and out early on the Sunday. Which was a shame as a Bittern had been seen at Cossington Meadows on the Saturday afternoon, and getting there early on the Sunday would have been a good move. As it was, I eventually got messages that the bird was still present and had been seen well in flight a few times mid-morning. Nichola had gone into town with Isabelle, so I headed off to Cossington with Josh and Alex. Unsurprisingly, given my usual luck with Bittern in the County, it had gone to ground and was not seen again whilst I was there. In fact the only birds of any note were 3 LRPs, 2 Yellow Wagtails and 2 Redshank on Plover meadow and 2 Oystercatchers flying over. Things got worse! Completely unbeknown to me, a Great Skua was picked up at Eyebrook and watched as it appeared to settle to roost. I picked up news from the LROS website and via a late text message from John (who'd also missed it whilst sleeping off a couple of early starts) late in the evening and decided that a stupid-O-clock start on the Monday morning was in order. I arrived at Eyebrook at 05:15 to find John already there. Despite several searches of the whole res we failed to pick up the clearly departed Skua. FUCK! A pair of presumably plastic Ospreys, plastic (but nice) Red Kite, Buzzard and Black-tailed Godwit were scant consolation. Since then, my working week has been so busy that I've not had a chance to do any other lunch-break or post-work birding - so at least I've not dipped anything else!