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.
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| 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).
Nice post, nice blog
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