Category: Blog

I remember going to Slimbridge when I was a child and not being terribly impressed; how we change as we get old! Now I always enjoy a trip here and love the duality of it: the serious birdwatching opportunities from the excellent hides and the close-up opportunities of seeing wildfowl from all around the world in the pens. I also love seeing how much children enjoy being there.

We had less than two hours on a very cold morning but had lots to see and it was lots of fun. The best from the hides were common cranes looking to prepare a nest, avocets everywhere, my first sight of ducklings this year and some coot (or cute) chicks.

Common crane

Avocets

First ducklings of the year

Coot chicks

In the pens, despite the cold, the black-winged stilts were showing that spring is on the way.

Black-winged stilts

Redshank

Knot

Knot

Great close-up views of waders: redshank, knot and avocets

There are still Bewick swans to be seen.

And some of my favourites:

Goldeneye

Eider

Female smew

Male smew

Pochard

And lots of fun for children:

Click below for gallery of today’s photos:

It rained all day and mid afternoon I made a decision to go for a walk anyway. I was so lucky as it soon stopped raining and I had a really pleasant walk up through the woods at the top of Stoke Park.

At first, near Duchess Pond, there was a noisy song thrush calling to another one.

Song thrush calling

I saw two swallows flashing across Duchess Pond and as I moved across to the flooded area they followed me.

The area to the side of Duchess Pond is really quite flooded at the moment and I saw a few mallard swimming in the field (so to speak). There was cuckoo flower everywhere – on a sunny day I would have hoped to see some orange tip butterflies.

In the woods at the top of the park the bluebells looked wonderful even on such a gloomy day and I was also pleased to see the ramson in blossom.

There was even some forget-me-knots in the wood.

I saw (and heard) two chiffchaff and then had a distant view of a great spotted woodpecker. As I progressed through the wood I saw the woodpecker again.

All through the wood I heard lots of robins but only saw four.

I’m not sure about this plant but could be habernia peramoena.

There were also lots of these (anemones I think) in the bluebell woods but difficult to tell as they had their heads down due to the rain.

Click below for gallery of photos from this afternoon.

We spent the day at Chew Valley, renewing our birdwatching passes and visiting Villice Bay and Herriots Bridge.

We did consider trying to get a bite to eat at the Lakeside Café but, even though we did find one free parking slot, we baulked at the thought of competing with the hundreds of visitors (mainly there for the fish and chips). In comparison, we were the only customers at the new outdoor coffee kiosk next to Woodford Lodge.

At Villice we saw great crested grebe, tufted ducks, coots and barnacle geese, a passerine I couldn’t make out, a pair of mallards making their way through the undergrowth going about what mallards do at this time of year and a grey heron. However, the best was the orange-tip and peacock butterflies and the flowers in the meadow en route to the hide.

Male orange-tip

Peacock butterfly

Geranium molle, the Dove’s-foot Crane’s-bill or Dovesfoot Geranium

Cardamine pratensis (cuckooflower, lady’s smock or milkmaids)

Anacamptis morio, the green-winged orchid or green-veined orchid

Bluebells (hyacinthoides non-scripta)

Great crested grebe

Prunella vulgaris (known as common self-heal, heal-all, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brownwort and blue curls)

Barnacle goose

Primula veris (cowslip, common cowslip, cowslip primrose). In French it is commonly known as cuckoo.

Mallards

Grey heron

At Herriots there were lovely displays of  male behaviour from the mute swans and the Canada geese. On the other hand, two more barnacle geese were behaving quite serenely.  There was a distant buzzard, some splendid great black-backed gulls (and other gulls too), more tufted duck, a few shelduck and shovelers and I heard a cuckoo (my first of the year).

Great back-backed gulls

Tufted duck

Canada geese

Barnacle goose

Buzzard

Mute swan

Canada geese

Shelduck

Tufted duck

Click below for gallery of photos from today at Chew plus a goldfinch in the garden before we left:

Lower Woods between Wickwar and Hawkesbury Upton off Inglestone Common in Gloucestershire is one of the largest ancient woodlands in the south-west of England and covers three square kilometres. The reserve has 23 woods and coppices whose boundaries have remained unchanged for several centuries. This is normally an excellent time to visit the woods to see the bluebells. However, the views would have benefited from some sunshine and the paths, which were still very muddy, could certainly have done with some drying out. Neil, the very helpful wood warden, advised us that walking boots and not wellies would be okay – fake news (I think he was confused by his excitement of seeing a beautiful old Landrover arrive as the same time as us).

We only covered 8 kilometres but our boots were so clogged up that the inclines seemed much more arduous than on our previous visits and we were quite weary at the end and glad to get back. Its my view that the woods are prettier when the bluebells are just dying back and the ransoms (which were about to flower) are in full bloom. Tempting to go back in a few weeks but I fear we are bound to get more rain and have to cope with even more muddy paths.

Neil was confused by his excitement of seeing this old Landrover – he had three Landrovers of his own in the yard.

Walking boot terrain – I think not especially when it started raining

The bluebells would have looked better with sunlight filtering through

Wood anemones, violets, primroses and lesser celendine complemented the bluebells.

The ramsons were so close to blooming

The dandelions are certainly at their best at the moment

Click below for gallery of photos from today

On a misty, murky morning before the sun burnt through I walked across Clifton Down. There wasn’t much bird life but I was interested in seeing the goats in The Gully. Originally there was a flock of 6 goats serving a useful purpose of nibbling away at the scrub (see full story); unfortunately there are only now 4 goats as 2 have been killed by dogs allowed into the enclosure. So sad.

The only interesting bird – a wren.

However, the blue (and white) bells, wood violets and yellow archangels cheered me up.

All of a sudden spring arrived: Tuesday –  windy dull and showery with a maximum of 13 degrees; Wednesday – sunny with a pleasant breeze and 10 degrees warmer.

We had two really pleasant walks in South Gloucestershire either side of having a repair on the damaged bodywork of our car to which nobody owned up. The first along Siston Brook in the Willsbridge Valley local nature reserve and the second along the River Boyd in the Golden Valley local nature reserve.

We heard plenty of birds but only had glimpses of a dipper and a grey wagtail and a full view of a robin singing  the joys of spring.

Robin proclaiming his territory

Grey wagtail which was very shy of my camera

However, the spring plants and blossom were a shear delight and compensated somewhat for the invoice for the car repair.

There were lots of butterflies but the peacocks, orange tips and brimstones were too fast for my camera skills yet I did capture this large white.

Proper English bluebells

Primroses

Anemone nemorosa is an early-spring flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to Europe. Common names include wood anemone, windflower, thimbleweed, and smell fox, an allusion to the musky smell of the leaves. It is a herbaceous perennial plant growing 5–15 centimetres (2–6 in) tall.

Click below for gallery of today’s photos:

I must admit it was yesterday’s reports of a stone curlew and an ashy-head yellow wagtail that attracted me to Northwick Warth. When I arrived everyone I met had seen them yesterday and a ringed ouzel too only moments before; but not for me.

Nonetheless, I was quite happy to see a whimbrel, pied/white wagtails (I’m going to have to brush up on these), wheatears, distant views of a large flock of curlew and oystercatchers, plenty of shelduck and redshank and dunlin on the coastline.

Warm weather is promised but there wasn’t much sign of it on the Severn Estuary this morning, although I have known it a lot colder.

Shelduck

White or pied wagtail?

Whimbrel

Curlew and oystercatchers

Wheater

White or pied wagtail?

Redshank and dunlin

As I don’t get much opportunity to photograph garden birds I thought it was worth taking these of house sparrows.

Click below for gallery of photos from this morning:

We weren’t sure if we could do justice to RSPB Arne on an afternoon’s visit on our way home from our “non-birding” visit to the New Forest (if I’m honest we would have made it 3 birding trips in the three days if the weather hadn’t been so bad and we hadn’t opted instead for a visit to the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu) but we thought the walk would be good for us anyway.

We were very lucky as the sun made a brief appearance and a spoonbill flew in briefly and flew out again with its little egret friend.

It was very strange indeed how the spoonbill flew in to Shipstal Beach, seemed to go and find the little egret in one of the pools, flew together to another pool, fed together for a while and then flew off together across the bay.

We made our way round to the hide and enjoyed watching a curlew having a wash and brush up.

There were oystercatchers, whimbrel, and Brent geese and shelduck on the spit where we had seen large flocks of spoonbills last year.

Along the (quite often very muddy) paths we saw chaffinch, dunnock , great tits, robins and blackbirds.

When the sun came out the gorse looked splendid.

We stopped off at Blashford Lakes in Hampshire on our way to a non-birding short break in the New Forest (that must be an oxymoron). We enjoyed the walk around the lakes on a very damp and murky afternoon even though the photographic opportunities were limited. The best came right at the beginning in the Tern Hide where we had close-up views of a little ringed plover, a redshank and a lapwing.

Little ringed plover

Redshank

Lapwing

We could also see a pair of great crested grebe, lots of shovelers, tufted ducks and indeed (to give credence to the name of the hide) a common tern.

Great crested grebe

Common tern

As we made our way round to the Goosander and Lapwing Hides we saw little grebe, garganey and wigeon but at some distance and in very poor light (i.e. excuse for poor photos).

Little grebe

Wigeon

Garganey in the middle 

Not sure about this little chap but probably a chiffchaff

Despite the conditions there were some signs of spring

The English are renowned for talking about the weather. I suppose the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish are more stoical about the weather they get but here in England we live in anticipation of something much better than the reality; and we are constantly disappointed and don’t stop talking about it.

Well for one reason or another I haven’t been able to get out for a week and I have found looking out of the window quite a miserable experience: we have had such a run of poor weather and there’s certainly not been any reason to enthuse about the joys of spring.

However, today we did get out and, although it didn’t rain (until the evening) it was the sort of day that everything looked black or grey and certainly not the sort of day to take photos.

Yet on our short walk along the coast south of Clevedon on the Bristol Channel I did take some photos. Not many to be truthful and nothing I could be proud of, but I did take some. I wasn’t going to publish them because they were so poor. However,  in the end I decided to as they serve as a reminder of the miserable pascal weather. I also kept hearing in my ear the Duke of Wellington’s quote of “publish and be damned” (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-when-wellington-said-publish-and-be-damned-the-field-marshal-and-the-scarlet-woman-1430412.html).

On the first part of our walk all I saw were shelduck: they were quite interesting to watch and hear as some of the males were being quite aggressive to each other.

Inland I caught sight of a kestrel which hovered and then perched some distance from me.

All along the coast we could hear skylarks which was the most positive aspect of the walk.

We could also see some flooded fields inland with little egrets, lapwings and (because a very friendly fellow birder pointed them out with his telescope) redshank too. A buzzard was then mobbed by a couple of crows.

Little egret

Redshank huddled together with one standing apart

Lapwing

Little egret in flight

Buzzard being mobbed by crows

Just before the end of our walk I could see a couple of curlew and some oystercatchers and then some people acting very strangely on the mudflats (they weren’t fishing or looking for cockles just searching for some sort of treasure).

Certainly better than sitting at home I suppose.

Curlew

Curlew and oystercatcher

Click below for gallery of photos from today:

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:

I only had an hour to spare and so I wandered across to Stoke Park. The cold wind had ceased and it was good to feel some warmth in the day even though it was still quite grey.

At first I only saw a few crows (one with a tasty meal) and some wood pigeon.

Then a kestrel flew by the trees surrounding Duchess Pond and it stayed long enough for me to make my way round and get close to it next to the pond.

A male stonechat made a brief appearance.

There weren’t many ducks on the pond just a pair of mallard and 4 moorhen.

On the way back there were lots of robins staking their territories noisily and a dunnock.