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A lovely sunny winter’s day at Slimbridge

    
Water Rail

With this week’s northern cold snap forecast to bring in sunny weather I decided a visit to Slimbridge was the order of the day. I like to make use of the members early entry benefit which normally produces a quiet and tranquil first hour in the hides. Early access is restricted to the Rushy side hides which also tend to have the best light. The normal winter suspects were on parade in front of the Rushy hide, the returning Bewick Swan flock, good numbers of winter wildfowl in terms of Widgeon, Teal and Pintail and a couple of Redshank. I took a few pics but with the sun hardly above the horizon and the hide and most of the Rushy in shade, the results weren’t great and did not take up storage space for long. A cold penetrating wind was blowing through the hide windows so I moved on to keep warm.

 

I wandered along to the Knott hide, usually  a good spot to see and photograph the normally very shy and sulky Water Rail.  The ones at Slimbridge, while still fairly easily spooked, have become habituated to feeding on left over scraps below the bird feeders during winter. Sure enough, after a short wait, two Water Rails made their way slowly and suspiciously towards the bird feeders. They clearly have become very use to people speaking as the commotion in the hide did not seem to bother them. They were more concerned about the other birds, particular the Moorhens which, for some reason, were very intolerant of them. At one point there was a chap just outside of the hide literally shouting into his phone, what don’t these people get about the need for quite in our hobby! There seem to be so many people out birding these days with absolutely zero field craft or consideration.

 







I finished the morning in the Estuary Tower where a kind volunteer pointed out a distant Peregrine and a lone Dark-bellied Brent in amongst the Canada Geese. By now if was late morning and I was frozen so I beat a hasty retreat to the café to warm up with a bowl of rather glutinous vegetable soup and a substantial piece of cake washed down with a nice latte. 

 

The time after lunch was mainly spent in the hides on the other side of the reserve. From the Zeiss hide the flock of over-wintering Russian White-fronted Geese could be seen grazing on the pasture. Subjectively, the flock seemed much larger than in previous years.

   

Russian White-fronted Geese

From the Kingfisher hide I watched a pretty female Stonechat being continuously harassed and chased away by a Robin. They do tend of  occasion to be very intolerant of other birds, which always seems at odds to me to their picture postcard image.

   

Stonechat

I had a thoroughly enjoyable winters day bird watching day at Slimbridge and I highly recommend it, especially if the sun is out!

 

I don’t normally do a day list but I thought it might be fun on this occasion to see how many different species I could record. The result was 53, somewhat lower than I anticipated if truth be told.


Footnote - My blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia! 

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