A pleasant day was forecast and we fancied a walk in the country. However, we weren’t  sure how muddy it would be after recent rain and so opted for a walk through the woods at RSPB Nagshead in the Forest of Dean, along tracks which we knew would not be too onerous. The recent removal of tolls from the Severn Bridges is certainly going to entice us across the Severn Estuary more often.

The Forest of Dean is one of the surviving ancient woodlands in England with more than 110 square kilometres of mixed woodland and lots of fairly rare birds (such as hawfinch and crossbills)  often reported there. However today at RSPB Nagshead we saw very few birds at all. The woodland, though, held plenty of charm.

I did, however, have plenty of opportunities to photograph birds when we stopped a little further on at Cannop Ponds where there were a variety of ducks.

Mallards are looking very attractive at this time of year but nowhere near as attractive as the mandarin ducks, which I hardly ever see other than here where they appear in fairly large numbers. There were also tufted ducks and a couple of little grebe which, busy diving, were quite a challenge to photograph.

Male mandarin duck

Female mandarin duck

Successful dive for this little grebe

Little grebe

Diving little grebe

Male tufted duck

Female tufted duck

Male mallard

The mute swans are always beautiful

Coot

Click below for gallery of photos from today: