Feb 19th Strumpshaw Fen

Greylag

It is half term this week for schools across the UK, meaning that there's a lot of children off school. Where better place to take them this week than at Strumpshaw. An activity trail is set up throughout the woodland trail for the little ones to learn about birds, while also building things and having fun. My role? Well, today I was told to help teach them find some of the birds on their tick sheet, which included mostly common garden birds plus a couple slightly tricky woodland birds like treecreepers and bullfinches. I wasn't able to locate these latter two for the families, but if I was the one doing the sheet, I actually saw almost all of them on my own, missing only the treecreeper and only hearing the bullfinch earlier on during my morning walk.

Whilst walking around the woods, trying to locate that elusive treecreeper, I discovered this beauty. I believe it is a chaffinch nest. It is a wonderfully crafted bowl of moss, sticks and mud. I don't think I've ever discovered one before, not that I'm an expert on finding bird nests any way.

Chaffinch nest

Away from helping the families find their birds, I was in my usual position in the Reception Hide spotting wildlife for the sightings board. The big highlights were a peregrine making a brief fly over and an otter swimming around the far side of the broad for several minutes. Neither were photogenic, so no photos of the otter this time around, unlike my lucky encounter last week. Also seen today were; greylags, mallards, gadwall, shelducks, buzzards, marsh harriers and Percy the pheasant, who soon vanished completely after I did a detour to avoid him from chasing me (he didn't even showed up while I was filling up the feeders!).