WWT Slimbridge. At Last. (Part 2)

Wow wow wow so many I have never heard of never mine seen!...
Must have fab day out PB...Bet you canny wait tae return!
Thanks for sharing ;-)

A great selection of their collection but I must admit my favourite part of Slimbridge was the wildlife hides.

Brilliant selection PB, and you know they say every day is a school day, if not, then you're busy feeding the daisies, this has definitely been a school day....

I note Bob's reply mentioning the wildlife hides, I did wonder if there was such a thing after some posts I've seen, it looks like I need two days there, one in the very public area and one for the wildlife area.

Mrs PR has seen both your posts for Slimbridge, and is now nagging me....

Thanks all, I wasn't sure if there would be enough "foreign" birds to make the post.... I should have known better lol

Mike... There is a house you can book to stay in practically on the reserve.... we did that at Welney and thought it was very reasonable per night (£95 I think, October school half term week last year). Not sure on Slimbridges costs Here is their website with full details. If it's like Welney they use Air B&B for bookings. Not sure about the accessibility though, Welney would have been an issue I think, very steep stairs.

There are about 7 hides I think, we didn't loiter long in any of them (I try to be mindful of Mrs PB's boredom threshold lol) but most were pretty good.

Michael B said:

Brilliant selection PB, and you know they say every day is a school day, if not, then you're busy feeding the daisies, this has definitely been a school day....

I note Bob's reply mentioning the wildlife hides, I did wonder if there was such a thing after some posts I've seen, it looks like I need two days there, one in the very public area and one for the wildlife area.

Mrs PR has seen both your posts for Slimbridge, and is now nagging me....

Slimbridge has 9 outward looking bird hides looking onto different habitats and in most seasons can provide a multitude of different birds plus the occasional wild birds that even fly into some of the exotic pens. You can often see Peregrine and Marsh Harrier and occasionally see Goshawk hunting as well. Obviously there are all of the exhibition pens but I will be honest I never bothered with those. However, it is a place where you can split and the non birding partner can enjoy all of the exotics without having to sit in a draughty hide while the birder heads off to look for the less exciting UK wildlife . Certainly its worth a trip and there are other locations in the area that are worth a visit if you do an overnight in the area. I could point you at a few

PimperneBloke said:

Thanks all, I wasn't sure if there would be enough "foreign" birds to make the post.... I should have known better lol

Mike... There is a house you can book to stay in practically on the reserve.... we did that at Welney and thought it was very reasonable per night (£95 I think, October school half term week last year). Not sure on Slimbridges costs Here is their website with full details. If it's like Welney they use Air B&B for bookings. Not sure about the accessibility though, Welney would have been an issue I think, very steep stairs.

There are about 7 hides I think, we didn't loiter long in any of them (I try to be mindful of Mrs PB's boredom threshold lol) but most were pretty good.

Slimbridge is around a 90 minute drive down the M42 then M5 from here, so cheaper to drive there and back, added to that, I don't need to worry about accessible facilities.

Bobs_Retired said:

Slimbridge has 9 outward looking bird hides looking onto different habitats and in most seasons can provide a multitude of different birds plus the occasional wild birds that even fly into some of the exotic pens. You can often see Peregrine and Marsh Harrier and occasionally see Goshawk hunting as well. Obviously there are all of the exhibition pens but I will be honest I never bothered with those. However, it is a place where you can split and the non birding partner can enjoy all of the exotics without having to sit in a draughty hide while the birder heads off to look for the less exciting UK wildlife . Certainly its worth a trip and there are other locations in the area that are worth a visit if you do an overnight in the area. I could point you at a few

The last Time I went there The black swan was there I don’t think he is allways there when people go and look for him but I think it was at one of the lake areas. I looked at the birds and everything and at some point I decided to try some volunteering there cause I wanted to help them with the birds so I joined a volonteering event where you can find out about all the volunteering opportunities and talk about it and you can see if you want to do them. The dark pink one is a greater flamingo and the light pink one is a lesser flamingo. The reason there pink is cause they eat shrimp. I don’t think I been to the hide there but slimbridge is really big. And they got all sorts of waterfowl that come and decide to visit or stay at Slimbridge. I got lots of pictures from there myself. Its only in Stroud so its not far away it’s half an hour to an hour away at the latest from but I still don’t allways get the chance to go there. The last time I went there I got pictures of the Black swan- not the black necked swan. When I went there to look for volunteering I also looked around at the animals but didn’t manage to see all of them cause I didn’t have enough time to go round properly so I decided to try to see them all next time. I think you got some very good close ups but Slimbridge is a good place for takeing pictures of birds Exspeacially Wildfowl

Hi PB,
Another amazing collection of high quality photos, I have seen some of these birds, Puna Teal, Black-necked Swan and Flamingos but I had to travel to South America for that some years ago.
I don't know WWT Slimbridge but it must be some place to visit.
Thanks for sharing,
Trevor