Headed off to Lancashire on Thursday and although we first visited Mere Sands Wood run by Lancashire Wildlife Trust it was fairly quiet there apart from the regulatory "welcome robin" which every reserve seems to have ! It has lovely woodland walks where we could hear regular birds like various tit members and robins and large pond areas which were mainly occupied by huge flocks of Canada and Greylag geese with enough moulting feathers to fill 500 duvets. ! and also saw the usual suspects like Moorhen and Coot. We had a nice one mile plus walk around the woodland pathway circuit, called in the cafe for obligatory bacon bap and coffee before deciding to head off to the nearby large Martin Mere WWT reserve which has both wild and captive birds. Although we walked through the captive and exotic species areas I tend to enjoy the natural wildlife/birds and thus visiting the various hides. This time of year is always a little on the quiet side with many birds in mid or end moult and skulking away but I took a few photos especially when I saw a Kingfisher - who doesn't like a Kingie ? !!
Although I only have a photo of Mere Sands Wood robin and the woodland path I will include them .....
Welcome robin ...
On of the lovely woodland pathway walk at Mere Sands Wood ....
On to Martin Mere WWT ..... and a beautiful Snipe seen from the newest 2019 Gordon Taylor hide
there was also a distant Sandpiper spotted by one of the other visitors - think they said Green Sandpiper ....
and one of the many beautiful lapwings seen ..
this young Black-headed gull was looking pretty as a picture against the daisy flowers; they do have lovely plumage
A male small white butterfly was persistent in his attempts to mate but the female kept raising her abdomen in refusal each time as she had already been mated with
Although we saw what looked like two younger buzzards in a distant field they were too far away for decent photo opportunities so you only get this hard cropped pic !
Highlight of the day was spotting a Kingfisher but as is often the case, there were lots of twigs to try and focus through, this one was catching lots of fish,
it consumed 6 whilst we were watching it for over an hour !
the Moorhens had several in the brood including this one ....
It was uplifting to see that the Greenfinch had young, we need to see a continued increase of these lovely finch birds after their numbers have dwindled significantly due mainly to the Trichomoniasis disease .....
I didn't really photograph many of the captive birds although the flamingo's were beautiful to see ......
Bewick swans ..... bonding behaviour or maybe pointing out where its mate missed a bit of preening. !
and this Smew .......
As part of the captive animals they have the smallest otters which are Asian small-clawed - beautiful little mustelids
Fingers crossed this posts as it is my 5th attempt due to one photo which was taken on the iPhone being just outside the permitted upload limit which I didn't see !
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Regards, Hazel
That looked a fabulous day out for you and Mike.
Nice to see the kingfisher, even with the obligatory twig in view, and I do love to see an otter. I've still yet to see a smew, one day.
Many thanks for sharing.
Mike
Flickr: Peak Rambler
Pete
Birding is for everyone no matter how good or bad we are at it,enjoy it while you can
Wendy S said:frontier guards
LOL!!
Wendy S said:We have missed the last couple of Winters due to trouble at the Yorkshire / Lancashire border. The frontier guards blamed something called covid but we reckon they did not want Yorkshire birders stealing their ticks
and I thought it was Yorkshire that had the strictest border guards. LOL. I had no problem crossing the border from Cheshire although they made me wear a red rose ;)
Hope you and Chris get back to Martin Mere soon but you'll have to learn the language first, funny accent up in Lancashire lol
Lot to learn
(Pardon the Scottish Accent)