An absolute belter of a trip to RSPB Ham Wall

A rare Sunday off work so Mrs PB and myself debated where to go. I accidently clicked a link to the Ham Wall blog, read said blog and thought, well why not. A little over an hour away from home, but if it's rubbish Glastonbury is 5 minutes away, so can always have a mooch around there.

Well what a delight it turned out to be, Mrs PB (not the greatest wildlife hunter/tracker/photographer) said it was excellent, the different environments within the reserve made for interesting walking, and there was just the right amount of accessibility and visibility for the viewers, but not so much as to infringe on the wildlife.

All the bird's remained very distant, so the following shots have been heavily cropped, and some of my ID's will be even more ropey than normal, so feel free to correct, please.

We got there about 8.30, so the dew was still twinkling on the spiders' webs

Normally I post a chronological set of pics following my journey, but today I shall group in types.... 

Birds... as I said, they remained distant, but there was a large variety, not pictured included Long Tail, Blue and Great Tits, many coot and moorhen, plus youngsters, multitudinous swans with aging cygnets, and a lot of ducks.

"I am Magnificent"

"Stop copying me", or "Me and my shadow"

Juvenile Marsh Harrier (maybe! Had been seen previous day)

Possibly a Bittern?

Great Crested Grebe

What I thought was GC Grebe again, but having seen it on computer, it has an eye stripe?

Then we picked up a stalker, who followed us a good 100 metres along the path, stopping when we did, then carrying on with us...

A posse of various ducks, a shoveller in the background, and possibly a female/juvenile mandarin in front, with the white-ish eye stripe?

It wouldn't be one of my posts without.....

There were many white butterflies about, but only saw one red admiral. Speckled wood outnumbered everything, and also several large commas

There were several other fly-y type things...

And then there were dragonflies and damsels... the air was awash with them... (please note, some of these types may repeat!!)

And finally....you never know who's looking at you.... or from where...

Hope it's not too long, and there will be further pics posted in dragons thread and butterfly thread if you'd care to take a peak (but probably tomorrow as Mrs PB's look is inviting me to turn the computer off Grin