Late House Martin and a good supporting cast

Bloody cold this morning so dug out the long Johns and in the context of local birding then Bob and I had an absolute blinder of a visit to Draycote Water this morning with plenty on offer, a bit of luck and a few flyovers. Our walk started off slowly with 55 Meadow Pipit on farborough bank and distant views of the male Red-crested Pochard in biggen bay and plenty of other duck in rainbow corner. Two immature swans arriving off the valve tower caused the blood pressure to rise before common sense made them in to Mutes but not before I had walked back to the spit for a closer look. I continued on clockwise meeting back up with Bob at the inlet which gave us great opportunity to go through the duck finding 4 female Pintail ( a 5th female was resting on the inlet with Mallard) 5 Goosander, 25 Wigeon, 4 female and one male Shoveler, 12 Pochard, 6 Gadwall and 6 Goldeneye before a fishermens boat flushed the lot. Kingfishers in toft and on the inlet, Little Egret on the inlet, 2 Raven, 10 Tree Sparrow, 30 Fieldfare, 80 Skylark, 2 Great-spotted Woodpecker, 2 Siskin and 30 Stock Dove kept the list ticking over nicely. As we returned then the first of 3 good flyovers took us by surprise with a very late House Martin feeding between inlet and rainbow corner before continuing on south then two groups of Golden Plover flew over south totalling 26 birds with 5 circling for a while followed by 5 Dunlin also going south over the outlet. The House Martin is my second latest record here. Our list finally ended with a Green Woodpecker and the last 2 of 9 Bullfinch seen clearly to be on migration as they were not intent on stopping and all going in a NE to SW direction which is unusual for the pond.