Big Birding and meeting Noah on Avalon Marshes, Somerset

It was time I visited the RSPB Hamwall and adjoining Natural England Shapwick reserves.  Well that's what several other birders suggested recently.  So we decided to get our Campervan 'Patience' into action for a few days.  A quick bit of research uncovered a distinct shortage of caravan sites near the reserves, but there was a large site just outside Glastonbury 'The Isle of Avalon' near the cycle route running past the reserve.  So that's where we stayed.  It was fine, the facilities were quite good, but it was noisy and busy being August.

An attractive 20 minute cycle through quiet droves and tracks took us to these very nice and very BIG reserves.

Image from RSPB.org.uk

 

They are so vast that everything feels kind of distant. In our 3 days we covered only a small part of the reserves, even though the first two days were on bike. On the 3rd day we took the Campervan to the RSPB Car Park and walked into the nature trails off the main paths.  This was delightful and the reed lined ditches along the tracks were twittering, shrieking and squawking with life.

It's easy for me to spend many hours alongside a ditch or a hedge watching birds going about their business as I find it all captivating.  But oddly many birders seem to be on a mission to bypass these little gems to get to a particular hide, with the biggest and best gear to capture photos of the biggest and best bird that their phone has alerted them to.  This week at Shapwick it was an Osprey called 'Noah'.  Well we called him Noah because apparently he had spent the last 3 days or so in the same dead tree on the lagoon overlooked by a very small hide called 'Noah's Hide'.  Maybe it was 'Noah's Lagoon' I don't know because we abandoned the map on day one, finding it inadequate for the task of navigating around the reserve.  

I'm not a tick box birder or a collector but eventually, we decided we should at least go and check out 'Noah' as undoubtedly Twitter would be asking if I had bagged a photo of the celebrity Osprey on my visit.  

We followed the bumpy track into the woods and found the hide to be heaving, hot and small.  It was overflowing with regulars who seemed to know Noah's every move for the last 3 days.  Some of them had been up since 4.30am to get that unique shot which no one else had captured. I wondered if Noah was aware of his dedicated fan club.

Noah was in his tree, a long way from the hide and my 300mm zoom lacked the oomph required for the job.  I balanced on the steps to the hide and took a few wobbly, distant shots.  Luckily Noah had just caught a fish and decided to circle the tree with it, showing it off, before settling down for his lunch.  So my distant shot did at least show him stretching his wings in full glory and you can kind of see a fish at his feet.

Having got the ‘Noah’ thing over with I was eager to get back to see what else was happening on the reserves.  There were a couple of distant Glossy Ibis, a Marsh Harrier and I managed to spot one Bittern – apparently I had missed no less than nine ‘flyovers’ by Bitterns the previous day.  Such is the nature of ‘Birding tales' – much like ‘fishing tales’.

So with all the ‘Big Birding’ out of the way I got down to enjoying what I enjoy most, watching the little things going on around me.  There were too many of these to mention – Black Caps rustling in the Elderberries, Reed Warblers frantically fattening up their late youngsters ready for the long migration South and Cetti’s Warblers tormenting me from behind the thick layers of reeds with their exotic call. Just a few of the fascinating things going on in this fabulous reserve.

One of these special moments happened to be a dear little Chiffchaff who seemed as intrigued by me as I was by him (or her – I can’t tell these things with juvenile Chiffchaffs).  

Turnstones at Starcross, Devon

The Turnstones are at Starcross Quay again.  But their numbers are much lower - in fact half as many!

A year ago today, we took the Starcross ferry to Exmouth across the Exe Estuary to visit our favourite restaurant - the River Exe Café.

Whilst waiting on the jetty at Starcross, we noticed a large flock of Turnstones crowding along the Quay Wall.  Many were basking in the sun, many were chattering and pushing around to secure their space.  We counted around 200 of them. Just a handful were scratching through the seaweed in the muds below the jetty.  Most were just resting.  

This year we counted around 100.  Some were sitting on nearby boats waiting for the tide to go out so they could drop down into the seaweed strewn muds.

These Turnstones had likely just made their long journey from Scandanavia and chose this safe roosting spot, just out of reach of land, to restore their energy before continuing the long journey South to winter in Africa.

A few Turnstones do winter around the shores of the Exe Estuary.  You are likely to hear them before you see them as they use their strong beaks to flip stones over, in search of small crustacians. These birds are more likely to have come from the Arctic or Canada and their journey stops here for the winter.

I hope we will see this year's Turnstone numbers increase over the coming days and we are not witnessing yet another serious decline in numbers of another migrating species. 

Freak Show and Willow Warblers at Bowling Green Marsh, Topsham, Devon

It's a while since I visited RSPB Bowling Green Marsh and there's such a fantastic bird hide and viewing platform overlooking the River Clyst as it joins the Exe Estuary. The area offers a safe roosting place for all types of wading bird.  

The natural vegetation around the adjoining marshes attracts many passerines too - often on migration, but many resident.

The Waders are starting to arrive now, on their Autumn/Winter migration and gradually the numbers will increase steadily over the coming colder months. High Tide is the best time to see them as they get pushed off the mud banks in the estuary.  Which fell nicely mid morning today, so I hot footed it down there to see what was about.  And although still a little quiet, there were plenty of waders to keep a Birder happy for a couple of hours in the hide.

However, en-route to the viewing platform I got distracted by some Willow Warblers, pointed out to me by a local (well known and almost resident) Birder. The birds were obviously there, but challenging to photograph as they were mostly flitting about on the other side of the hedgerow, flashing glimpses at us now and then.  

They decided to play hide and seek for an hour or so, and I'd now gathered around me two other birders and a few locals gawping like we were in a freak show.  The other two birders were now running up and down the hedgerow shouting at me 'here Jo", " no here Jo", "over here, look there's a parent feeding a juvenile" and I was running frantically as instructed but missing each opportunity which evaporated by the time I got there - as it does when you're trying to photograph birds on demand!

Much as I enjoyed the company of my fellow birders, I knew I had to be on my own if I was going to get any shots worth keeping.  Eventually, I got my moment, brief as it was and I won't win any awards.  But, like all my photographs, they are a memory of a nice day spent in a beautiful location, watching nature at its best - doing its thing.