13 February 2012
And a good morning to you all. Yesterday we finally managed to get to the new RSPB site at Burton Mere Wetlands. Finding the place was a real nightmare however. We looked for the usual brown tourist signs but only saw one of them. A local we asked told how to get there but in actual fact the site is on two parts and he sent us to the smaller one of the two. We couldn't get out scooters down the path to the hide because it was far too muddy.
However, it wasn't a total wash out seeing we did get photos of some snowdrops ...
I also tried Jan's new Tamron lens which has a macro setting on it but I couldn't get it to work properly. I just need to try it more often and learn how to use it properly. It was at this smaller site that we found out where the main site was. The village of Burton is a special conservation are and so the RSPB were not allowed to have the usual brown sign. Instead they were allowed to put a small blue and white sign not at a great height, it's about a meter from the ground on a lamppost. I found this very strange because estate agents are allowed to put their signs and of course there are the normal road signs all over the place. There seems to be a bit of hypocrisy going on there methinks!
Once we arrived though we found the site to be not at all bad really. There were plenty of birds about, which after all is what it is all about and we got 4 or 5 for our year list. Now we know where it is we will go back later in the year and see what's about there then. There are no photos from yesterday because of the dark grey and overcast conditions. Altogether we got 34 species of bird, the start being what we thought was a honey buzzard sat on fence post beside the A41 as we drove home. On getting home we looked it up in our Collins and sadly we can't now claim it ... nanas!!!
We left home 8.15 am with Jan driving and me taking note of what we saw. Our route was the A444/M6/M54/A41 and it was a fairly quiet drive the whole way. It wasn't until we got to the M6 before saw our first bird, a wood pigeon. As we continued on we saw magpie, grey heron (flying over the M6), common buzzard (we saw around 10 though out the day), blackbird, rook, crow, pheasant, greater black backed gull, jackdaws, collared doves, chaffinch, herring gull, kestrel, black headed gull, mallard, dunnock, blue tit.
At the wetlands itself we got chaffinch, mallard, coot (at which time I was ready to come after seeing my favourite bird), lapwing (large flocks of them on the ground and flying around), widgeon, tufted duck, shoveller, teal, redshank, greenshank, gadwall, dunlin, mute swan, bar tail godwits, crow, Canada goose (but only 3 of them, probably the smallest number I've ever seen), shellduck and robin. Not a lot of birds yesterday but hey-ho, that's the joys of birding enit? You never know what you will see when you go out. We are just happy to be out enjoying what we can see.
Yes, we keep a list but listing is not the be all and end all of birding for us. I'm always envious of those birders who can get out and walk for miles, managing to get to places that I can only ever dream about. But I don't resent them their abilities. Birding would be so much poorer without the efforts of such people as The Fleetwood Birder (http://fleetwoodbirder.blogspot.com/2012/02/yellow-bunts-abound.html ); Wirral Birds (http://wirralbirders.blogspot.com/2012/02/date-with-gorgeous-red-head.html ); Phil at (http://anotherbirdblog.blogspot.com/ ) and not forgetting The Urban Birder at (http://urbanitybirder.blogspot.com/2012/02/cecil-fowler.html ). I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of others blogging about birding.
The only addition to our days list as we drove home was a flock of redwing just outside Neston. The rest of the day was spent in photographing pub signs. You can see my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/15764683@N00/
Oh yes of course, I did get one shot at Burton ...
I was going to name this Wind Up because that is what it turned out to be. I saw the carving on the tree and called out, "Woodpecker!" Jan stopped dead and tried scanning around, "Where?" she asked. "There, on the tree in front of us," I replied. "Where, I can't see it!" Then the penny dropped ... I'm sure my black eye will soon be unnoticeable ;-)))
Another of my many interests is art and public art in particular. We stopped for a drink at a pub called The Little Owl on the outskirts of Chester. A nice pub and nice pint of Pedigree too. But facing the road was this beauty ...
Another photo I got in Dorktown town centre on Saturday is this one ...
We are getting quite a few these little beauties in town these days. Always a joy to see the, Common they may be, but they do brighten up the town. I like 'em anyway.
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