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| Pump House under reconstruction |
A chill in the air grips the morning. Frost lay on the ground. I felt alone as I explore the reserve during my usual walk before my shift began. It is Halloween and though there was an eerie silence in this frosty cold scene, it was far from haunted. In fact, it was rather beautiful. If last week was dominated by redwings, this week, it were fieldfares that were the most numerous bird that I saw this morning. Flocks of them passed me by with a chorus of chuckling calls as they went in search for fruit bearing trees. A pair of them landed in a tree along Sandy Wall in clear view. I pointed my camera at them for a couple of shots. But at that moment, I noticed something moving in the corner of my vision. I looked down and saw that it was a stoat running along the wooden border. As always with me and stoats, it was gone in seconds before I could even react.
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| The Moon |
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| Frosty Nettle |
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| Fieldfare |
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| Pink-footed Geese |
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| Chinese Water Deer |
Fen Hide was fairly quiet, though the swans, a hiding snipe and three Chinese water deer kept me occupied as well as spotting distant birds passing over the reserve and trying to put a name to them using their flight patterns and calls as clues to their identities. Eventually, the cold was getting to me and I had to leave in order to warm up. With opening time at Reception Hide now 10am, I still had plenty of time to kill. So I went to investigate the state of the river trail up to as far as the sluices. It was muddy in places, but still manageable. More fieldfare could be seen here, most likely tempted by the many apples littered along the path before I showed up. Reed buntings were less fussed about me being around that they continued to be busy feeding on the reed heads metres from where I stood.
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| Snipe |
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| Buzzard |
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| Mute Swan |
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| Cobber the Black Swan |
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| Reed Bunting |
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| Siskin |
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| View from Reception Hide today |
Reception Hide was a much quieter place this week. With half term over, there were very few children making a lot of noise and the door wasn't constantly slamming every couple of minutes. It was utter bliss! We still had plenty of visitors, but no where near as busy as last week. I was busy myself, though, as I kept pointing things out to visitors until I provided them a decent sized list of bird names before they left the hide for their walk on the reserve. Marsh harrier, kestrel, buzzard, gadwall, mallard, coot, shoveler, mute swan, black swan, moorhen, fieldfare, lapwing, snipe, little grebe... The list just grew. It was definitely a more enjoyable week compared to the stress of the week before.
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| Sleeping Gadwall and Shoveler |
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| Gadwall |
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| Shovelers |
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| Mating Mallards |
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| Coots (not really sure what its got though) |
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| Hot Air Balloon flying over the reserve |
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| Moorhen |
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