Thursday 1 March 2012

Attenborough pulls a few in

26th Feb - A Sunday afternoon in the glorious sunshine over the weekend couldn't be resisted, so we set sail for Attenborough Nature Reserve. I love a good walk round the pits and woods at this great reserve, there's always something to see and it provides plenty of entertainment for kids too.
We walked from the Barton Lane car park up to the church at Attenborough village and was hoping to get through to the woods at the top to search for the Lesser Peckers, but when we got to the old car park we were blocked by the new flood defence system that they're installing. Instead we cut across to the river and back round to the centre. The birds were out in good force with 46 species in total. A stunning number of Goosanders were present (in excess of 30) but unfortunately the Smew couldn't be found. A couple of Fieldfare were found feeding on Glebe Field. New for the year were Red-crested Pochard, Ruddy Duck and a cracking Bittern which was showing well on Dragonfly Pond (this is the one between Tween Pond and Wheatear Field and is viewable from the main path to the VC). I managed to get a poor mobile grab through the scope, watched it for a minute or so and then it silently crept backwards into the reeds.
Not very often my luck turns out that that! Usually it's "Oh it's just crept into the reeds, you should have been here a minute earlier"
I'll upload a couple of videos of a gorgeous male Bullfinch and a Song Thrush singing his heart out as the sun went down.

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