A trip up to the Avalon Marshes as I was leading a trip for work and took a minibus full of eleven keen birdwatchers out for the morning.
A good start was had as a sheep field about half a mile south of the Ham Wall car park contained not just sheep but also about thirty Cattle Egrets!
After parking we started by walking out to Meare Heath and before long found the drake American Wigeon that had been present for a couple of weeks, it was nice to introduce a bunch of "new" birders to the joys of twitching! The American Wigeon spent most of the time asleep, but occasionally raised its head for a quick glance around.
Just along the bank from the American Wigeon there was a roosting Garganey, which also spent most of the time with its head tucked away, but did show enough at times to clinch the ID.
After a successful stop we tried our luck at Ham Wall RSPB where pretty much the first birds we saw were four Marsh Harriers soaring in the sky together, over the next hour we must have seen up to eight different birds. From the first viewpoint we saw a couple of Great White Egrets and there were a good number of Lapwing about.
A walk around the reserve produced many of the expected species, but we did miss a few things that would have been nice to have added to the trip list, but it was an enjoyable morning with a total of 47 species seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment