Mersehead Recent Sightings 21st- 27th January
Hi, this is my first blog and I mainly work in the Visitor Centre at Mersehead.
In the last week, what has been so noticeable is that the murmurations of Starlings have been getting larger and larger. The birds are coming to roost at the reed beds near the Meida hide and on one night, a conservative guess had 20,000 birds in the air at one time.
On another night I waited for 2 hours near the Meida Hide in a cold westerly but the birds choose to appear just as packed up my camera and tripod. I still got 5 minutes of their aerial display on film.
Starling murmurmation a Mersehead (photo credit: L.Wilde)
The murmurations generally happen between 4pm and 5pm and are attracting quite a few visitors. There is no guarantee that they will turn up in large numbers – my smallest flock was 400 – but as this will probably continue until March, the chance for even bigger flocks is there and we can boast that we have similar flocks as was shown on Winter Watch this week.
Elsewhere the yearly event – the Big Garden Bird Watch is on us for this next weekend. I have volunteered to give 2 workshops on how to build odd Bird feeders. A case of looking around the kitchen and thinking I could make a birdfeeder out of that.
For me, this started 2 years ago when the rear portion of my car’s exhaust fell off and I thought with a few modifications it could a birdfeeder. So it proved.
So on Saturday and Sunday between 11am and 2pm I will be at the Sulwath Centre demonstrating how plastic cups, bits of toast, pop bottles and oranges can help give your garden a new look while also feeding the birds.
We have created a few of these feeders and put them out at the Mersehead Visitor Centre. It has had mixed results as the local birds get use to these new designs.
The following birds have been seen on the feeders – Blue tits, Great tits, Chaffinches, House Sparrows, Tree Sparrows, Green Finches, Gold Finches, Yellow Hammers, Robins, Pheasant, Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Blackbirds, Dunnocks, Crows, Coal Tits and Wrens.
Lewis Wilde, Events & Learning Assistant