WWT Slimbridge - August 2014

Almost a year out of date on the blog so apologies if you have seen these pics before. I shall keep words to a minimum and the pics to a premium.

A quiet Sunday with little else planned whilst at Donna's in Cheltenham, so a quick mooch down the M5 to WWT Slimbridge. Not a lot about due to the time of year, but the Bar tailed Godwits were showing particularly well in some bright Summer sunshine. I couldn't resist the Greylags among the bright flowering plants also.

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Dry Mornings Adventure

After a week of solid deluge across the country it was nice to wake on a Sunday morning to sunshine and a slight frost, tendrils of mist hanging atop the rivers surface and the surrounding water meadows. The swollen river is pretty quiet this time of year with water sources everywhere even the water meadows are pretty lacking in Ducks and Snipe. 

The one species we seem to have gained in huge numbers is the Mute Swan, the wintering Swan herd has grown to 26 on the last count, enjoying the shallow flood water between the two rivers. Half a dozen or so Greylags also seem to enjoy feeding on the lush grass. 

The bright glow of the morning sun and the hanging mist gave a gorgeous diffused light, highlighting a pair of Swans on the river as well as making the landscape quite eerie and dramatic.

Mute Swan Pair

Misty Water Meadow Tree

 

River Test

Misty Sunrise

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Watermeadow Sunrise - 15th Feb

Having enjoyed the sunset so much the previous evening and having done a bit of weather research, a clear dawn beckoned so begrudgingly I set the alarm for 6am in the hope of getting a little closer to the feeding Mute Swans for some nice low level photography.

Opening the door as the first hint of light hit the dark sky, the cold fingers of Jack frost latched on to me pretty quick, I would need a coat! Walking through the water meadows I could already see a hint of colour against the dark sky. I managed to get myself over the rather narrow bridge in the dark on through into the water meadow.

I set myself up led down in the hope of some low level Swan images and waited, it wasn't long before the sky started to brighten, the pastel hues effecting the colour of the mist that hung above the frosty ground. I don't ever remember being out on such a stunning morning watching the atmospherics changing every second.

Early Morning Light across the Watermeadows

Unfortunately my plan didn't really come to fruition with the Wildlife all the Mute Swans from the night before fed on the floods but they were along way away from my lens, Plenty of Greylag & Canada Geese along with Mallard & Gadwall went about there business flying above my head, every wing beat audible on such a still morning.

A lone Brown Hare emerged out of the mist in front of me, but the light on the ground was still to dark for photography, a real shame as it looked very atmospheric shrouded in mist. As the light started to improve 2 Little Egrets appeared and dropped swiftly down on to the water, soon followed by a Grey Heron, I managed a shot of it landed through the mist although it didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped.

Descending Heron in the morning mist.

As the light got brighter I started to think about making tracks back towards the house and get ready for work. Not what you want on such a stunning morning. I did take a couple more landscape shots before I left the sky now pinker than the original orange colourings half and hour or so before. Quite a stunning hour and a half well worth braving the early alarm and cold for.

Pink sky in the morning - Beautiful

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Watermeadow Sunset - 14th Feb

St.Valentines Day, you may ask was I enjoying a romantic evening with my girlfriend? Well no as she lives 110 miles away, so I was rushing home from work at 5pm to make full use of the remaining light. It had been a cracking day weather wise and having spotted some wintering swans on a freshly flooded area of water meadows I headed off armed with both cameras, big & small lenses. Who needs romance?

Hoping for an exciting wintering Swan visitor I had to make do with our native Mute Swan, but 28 of them fed on the fresh clear shallow channels now covering the meadow. By far the largest number I've seen on the meadows and around the village. Several groups of Geese flew over occasionally coming into land. 12 Canada Geese and 6 Greylag feeding not far from the Swans.

Through the fading light I managed to pick out 3 Snipe on the furthest of the led water, and they were frequently joined by 15 or so Starling. A couple of White outlines against the pastel sky immediately caught my attention in the hope of Barn Owls, but proved to be the ever present Little Egrets.

I tried a couple of slow exposure photographs of the Swans as the light started to dim to no avail, swapping cameras over to make full use of the gorgeous purple, pink and orange hues of one of the best sunsets I have ever seen. Simply Stunning!

Swans at Sunset - What a scene!

Stunning Sky

Long exposure Swan fest

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Blashford Lakes - 13th Jan

With plenty of new additions to the year list in the bag we headed back through the New Forest to finish the afternoon off at Blashford Lakes, Hants Bird News had been logging 2 Bittern for the past fortnight or so, so the odds of seeing 1 had to be good right?

I wasn't really expecting to pick up an new ticks but the shear number of wildfowl out on Ibsley water was something to behold. c.900 Shoveler, c.300 Greylag Geese which happened to erupt from the water and fly straight towards the Hide windows. 

Cormorant, Tufted Duck and a few Pintail were dotted in between the Shovelers, I also managed to pick out a couple of distant Goosanders, trying to get a count when 2 drakes flew straight past the hide. I did get another tick after all!

2 Out of focus Greylags, ruining or making the picture?

Greylag flyby

Leaving Ibsley Water behind we headed across the road to try for the illusive Bittern in the Ivy North hide. The words you most definitely don't want to hear when entering a hide are "your 2 minutes too late, its just walked right across that open channel and into the reeds". 45 minutes later, and we are still watching a small area of reed bed, about 10ft across.

Too say I was a little pissed off would be an understatement, the brief visit of a Kingfisher outside of the hide window did nothing to lighten my mood, which got progressively worse as I headed home Dad had great pleasure informing me that he had just flushed a Bittern from one of the small areas of reed alongside the River. What a patch tick that would have been!

Overall I guess it couldn't really put to much of a dampener on what was a cracking day for species and weather! 56 logged throughout the day.

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Sunny November Waterfowl

As well as the afore mentioned wildfowl in earlier posts, Slimbridge and its surrounding reserve where abundant in a few other Wildfowl species. 5 or 6 Shelduck joined the masses of Wigeon on the tack piece. Along with 40-50 Greylag Geese, all very vocal as Sparrowhawks and Buzzards regularly flew past.

Shelduck

Shelduck

Shelduck

Greylag

Greylag

In smaller numbers, several Grey Heron stood sentry duty on the edges of flooded outcrops, Dead still in the bright morning sun. Tufted Duck & Pochard drifted close to the hides allowing the occasional close up photograph, along with a rather tatty looking drake Shoveler.

Grey Heron

Tufted Duck

Drake Pochard

Drake Pochard

Drake Shoveler

From the Holden Tower various species could be seen on the flooded shores of the River Severn, 70 strong flocks of Dunlin fed on the flooded grassland along with Canada Geese intermixed with a lone European White-fronted Goose. A small flock of Barnacle Geese also fed along the shoreline. A much closer Barny fed inside the Slimbridge grounds, enable a photo of these chunky geese.

Barnacle Goose

Barnacle Goose

Barnacle Goose

After a quick spot of lunch, we headed around to the Zeiss hide, stopping only briefly as there were dozens of screaming kids running through the hide! Much to my annoyance, a good hour or more was spent in the Van Der Bovenkamp hide, as supposedly a Bittern was in the tiny block of reed in front of it. Its fair to say no Bittern was spotted by me, much to my annoyance. Occasionally the huge mass of Golden Plover would take flight before settling back down to feed.

Golden Plover

To finish the trip off, we thought we would go for the pair! Having managed some stunning views of the Short-billed Dowitcher down at Lodmoor in September, I thought I would get a spot on the long staying Long-billed Dowitcher that had been at Slimbridge for a good few months.

The bird was present out on the South Lake along with 50 or so Black-tailed Godwits, but with the sun dipping rapidly the whole scene was just a lot of shadowy birds so no pictures unfortunately, but good to get the set in the bag, and round off a pretty good day!

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Geese, Deer, Terns & More

My apologies for the lack of posts in the past week, Just haven't seem to gotten around to writing. So I shall write this and hopefully you wont be bored by the ramblings of a weeks adventures.

So after telling myself I wouldn't visit Rooksbury in the evenings to let the Otters have a little rest from one less spectator, I headed down last Tuesday lunchtime in some nice bright light, and had the pleasure of watching a pair of Common Terns fishing for a rather unexpected 10mins or so, before they disappeared rather as abruptly as they appeared. Not a species I've seen down at Rooksbury or in and around landlocked Andover for that matter. Noisy blighter's mind!

Common Tern

Rooksbury Tern

So still in the quest for Otters but some that might be a little more local and without the disruption of other voyeurs I sat up down on the conflux of the Half Water and the River Test (Once all of the Fishermen had gone home), Dad had been seeing the odd sign and it seemed like a good a spot as any. Perched on my stool facing downstream I could see in both directions, and a quick turn of the head back upstream, so whilst becoming increasingly distracted by the new river Mute Swan arrivals all 7 of them, I heard something behind me and a quick glance around upstream resulted in a Brownish shape swimming across the river nearly at the far bank a good 100 yards away, now I wouldn't like to swear on it being a Water Vole because it could well have been an Otters head, but the rather large splash that occurred a minute or so later confused me even more.

I did however manage to capture another unexpected visitor to the River bank, Just wish I hadn't been quite so exposed so the Muntjac Buck might have come a little closer. A good spot all in all, with Sedge Warbler, Chiffchaff, Swift, Swallow, Kestrel, Tufted Duck, Coot, Moorhen, Little Grebe, Long Tailed Tit &  Blue Tit all seen too. As the light started to fade I caught sight of this little Roe Doe in the amongst the trees, who seemed quite happy to pose for me.

Mute Swans & Cygnets

Muntjac Buck

Roe Doe

Monday night in glorious sunshine, I headed up the river in pursuit in some recently spotted Hobby's, no such luck however I did add to my 2012 list with addition of 2 Spotted Flycatchers. Also quite abundant on the River bank along with the obligatory Chiffchaff was Bullfinches, 3 pairs spotted on one stretch alone. With nothing really playing ball for the camera, I thought I'd check up on the Greylags, the goslings are growing up pretty fast and there seem to be more there than before too. A Cock Pheasant was quite obliging on the way home too.

A small proportion of the Greylags

Spring Cock

With a lot dryer weather set for a few days, my evening job as groundsman for St. Mary Bourne Cricket Club is taking slightly more presidence than getting out with the camera, but why not merge the two I hear you say! Well I kinda did, a regular visitor to my square when the mowers going the male Blackbird.

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