Martin Mere 19th Sept 2014

 We went to Martin mere, expecting to stay 2 or 3 hours but ended up staying for 6!  Now I see how it is worth the £10 entry fee! Part of the park is a zoo type enclosure with birds from around the world trapped in and part of the park is a nature reserve with free and wild birds. Below are some of the highlights but I really recommend it!

Avocet (not wild so couldn't add to the list)

captive black bellied whilstling duck

Black Headed Swan (captive)

One of the very cool hides on the nature reserve bit!

weird duck hairdoo

wild Dunnock

Eider

Still unidentified duck (haven't got around to looking it up)



Grey (or yellow?) wagtail

Pink footed and Greylag Geese

Friendly juvenile moorhen that stalked us!

Kingfisher

Mallard

Mandarin

Marsh Harrier - we watched a spectacular display of the marshie chasing lapwing, trying to snare tea

Muscovy Duck (captive)

Nene Goose (captive I think)



Male Shoveler

Pochard

Some kind of foreign teal (ringed teal possibly?)

Shelduck

Female Shoveler

Goldeneye or Scaup? cant remember so I need to look in the book!

Whooper Swan, there was also mute and Bewicks swans there

Female Shoveler (again!)

Bird Fair, Risley Moss and Dee Estuary Burton Mere

Little Egret

I had a great time at my first Birdfair on Saturday. It took around 3 hours to get over to Rutland Water from Warrington but it was worth it. I had read about the Birdfair in "The Biggest Twitch" http://www.thebiggesttwitch.com/ and since this book was my main inspiration to get properly into birding, I was quite excited to see that Ruth and Alan were giving a presentation at Birdfair, which was why I decided to go. I watched three talks in total. The first on birding in Gujarat, India which wasn't great, then Ruth and Alan's talk which was fun as expected. Later in the day when our legs were tired we sat in the Extremadura talk and that was also very inspirational and somewhere that is now definitely on my list to go!.


Swallow

All in all Birdfair was great and I hope to attend again next year. I saw demos on ringing birds (felt sorry for the poor little blue tit though), grabbed loads of freebees and generally learned a lot. The only problem was that apart from a sneaky use of some scopes I had no intention of buying to see what was going on, on one of the lakes (a Little Eegret, Lapwings, Canada Geese, Mallards) I didn't see any birds!

To rectify that the next day we went to Woolston Eyes where we again circumnavigated the area with the hides and came to the conclusion I better just pay to get a key. I did see my first Pochard there though so it wasn't all bad.


Bullfinch sitting in the Risley Moss Carpark

The day after we went to Risley Moss where we watched a Hobby, Kestrel and colourful male Bullfinch (none were new for any of my lists but still fun).

After lunch we went to Dee Estuary Burton Mere for the first time, this was a treasure trove. Great trails, different habitats and a wealth of birds even in August. I definitely want to go back in Autumn as it was wader-licious! My year total now stands at 88 (rank 283 on bubo listing website), 12 away from target after only two months.

Bar-tailed and Black-Tailed Godwits (and a Moorhen)

We had trouble identifying this one but in the end settled on plain old common Buzzard, still great views though!



Another tricky identification for us, the new bird book I purchased from Bird Fair pointed towards Common Sandpiper however.

Gadwall, we also saw female Teals which was new for the list too.



Yellow Wagtail