7th August 2024 – Northwick Warth and Pilning Wetlands, Severn Estuary

I’m afraid golf and COVID have limited my birding activities in the last few weeks.

This morning we had a walk along the Severn Estuary at high tide; even that was fairly limited as we had miscalculated the weather forecast. In fact, it was more a case of having the wrong clothing (as they say – there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing) and so we curtailed our walk when the showers set in.

On Northwick Warth (a saltmarsh on the edge of the River Severn) there were big flocks of black-headed gulls and pockets of curlews and oystercatchers (over 50 of each) within our range.

On the warth there were flocks of meadow pipits and goldfinches and even larger flocks of starlings.

On the other side of the Severn Walkway is Pilning Wetlands which seem to have been filled in quite a lot since our last visit. We couldn’t work out if they were trying to improve the wetlands or destroy them. Hopefully, when the wet weather comes it will be a case of the former.

The light was very poor but on the first section of the wetlands we could make out over 50 redshank with a few dunlin and, I believe, a ruff. As it was high tide I imagine there would have been larger numbers of all these waders further along the wetlands but we were too “nesh” (certainly not my adjective nor one local to the west country) to carry on.

The weather forecast looks a little better going forward and so, hopefully, we will have better luck next week on our holiday in Norfolk.

But there again I wasn’t too good at interpreting it today!