We made the most of the first day of British Summer Time which was a sunny day but with a cold wind. We started at WWT Steart and had a really good 10 km walk around the reserve but we didn’t see an awful lot of birds. In fact all we saw was a reed bunting and a mute swan on the walk out to the furthest point and then some distant views of curlews, shelduck, shovelers, oystercatchers and some gulls.

Bath time for the mute swan

Distant view of curlew

We decided to go on to RSPB Greylake which was only 10 miles inland.

There we had a lot more success with great views of lots of wigeon, shoveler, teal, lapwing, reed bunting, blue and great tits, house sparrows, chaffinch, goldfinch, a kestrel, a grey heron and two overflying crane.

Wigeon orchestrating his mates

Wigeon

Teal

Reinforcements of wigeon – safety in numbers

Shoveler

Shoveler

Wigeon

Kestrel

Kestrel

I have to thank Angela Edwards and her husband for spotting the crane, which I was lucky to get a shot of, as I had already packed my camera in the boot of the car.

Common crane

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_crane

Some of the birds at the car park:

Female reed bunting

Goldfinch

Chaffinch

Blue tit

Male reed bunting

House sparrow

Blue tit

Blue tit

RSPB Greylake is such a lovely small reserve with good hides and viewing points. The display of birds feeding in the car park is worth the visit alone.

We called in at Aust Warth (Severn Estuary) on the way home to see if we could see the barn and short-eared owls but we were not lucky and all we saw were a crowd of twitchers waiting hopefully.

Click below for gallery of photos from today: