We headed to the Waterhay car park.
Before we had really started a kestrel
flew across the car park, not the only one of the day – I think they must be
having a good year!
As we headed along the first footpath, we encountered a mix
of small birds including chiffchaff,
blue
tit, great
tit, wren,
an elusive goldcrest
and robin.
A young wren |
We briefly popped through the hedge to look at lake 82,
where we had another view of a kestrel and on the lake there were tufted
duck, great
crested grebe feeding their young, mallard,
coot
and mute
swan, also flying overhead were a number of Canada
goose and cormorant
as well as a single greylag
goose.
As we passed the buddleia bushes for the first time we saw a
couple of chiffchaff, but not many butterflies.
As we reached the long lake 68a/b we saw a number grey
heron and little
egret dotted along the edge of the lake.
There were also more mute swan and cormorant, a lot more
cormorant in fact. We also saw some black-headed
gull and lesser
black-backed gull mixed in the throng. Along the edge of the lake was a moorhen
or two feeding then we were lucky enough to spot a kingfisher
sitting quietly in a lake-edge bush – brilliant!
Kingfisher with a moorhen hiding below |
Around the same time we picked up our first comma of the
day as the sun started to warm the day up.
We worked our way along the edge of the lake picking up
additional bird species like pochard
and common
tern on and over the water. In the hedgerows we picked up long-tailed
tit, blackbird,
song
thrush, cetti’s
warbler, blackcap
and some all to elusive reed
warbler and whitethroat.
Finally a couple of green
woodpecker were seen making swift exits from the lake edge ahead of us!
Butterfly were much more showy as the sun continued to warm
the day, several more comma were seen as well as a number of red admiral,
a small
tortoiseshell, a lovely painted lady
and a fair few green-veined
white.
Comma |
(NA)
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