After staying overnight in Berkshire with my daughter I left her house at 8.40. am. with the aim of visiting a few BBOWT reserves in the locality. I started with a walk at Hosehill lake, just five minutes away where you park in a pub car park before crossing the road onto the reserve. I took the path around the lake; a few of the usual duck and water fowl species were there (greylags, canada geese, shoveler, coot, tufted duck, mallard and cormorant etc.). With the mild weather and early sunshine, it was feeling a bit like spring, and there was a lot of birdsong as the path meandered through an area of woodland, before reaching a willow fenced area around some bird feeders. Holes in the panels enabled you to observe the many woodland birds which were busily feeding - nuthatch, coal tit, blue tit, great tit, long tailed tit, dunnock, blackbird, chaffinch. A work party came past, one of whom stopped for a chat, and recommended another path from the pub which led to the gravel pits where more water birds could be seen. No time for that today, but worth knowing about, seeing it is so close to where my daughter lives. The one drawback at this time of year is that the paths are extremely muddy, possibly not helped by the fact that employees from a local industrial estate often visit the area during lunch breaks. However, in the summer, I would expect the reserve to be alive with warblers and other summer visitors and I look forward to another visit, all being well, later in the season.
From Hosehill, I drove the few miles to the Discovery Centre at Thatcham, again owned by BBOWT. The sun was low in the sky which made it difficult to make out the various wildfowl on the lake, let along take a decent photo. However, I took a short (muddy) walk around the lake before refreshing myself with a cup of coffee in the café. On previous visits, I have extended my walk to the reed beds, but decided against it today, particularly as the hide has been cordoned off for several years now.
My final stop was at Snelsmore Common, actually a Country Park taken over by the Wildlife Trust in 2014. It has woodland and heathland and I decided to take one of the waymarked trails which was expected to take an hour (but actually only took half an hour) There was not much to see on the heath today, but in the woods I watched nuthatches, long tailed tits and saw my first greater spotted woodpecker of 2020.
path on to the heath
woodland where I saw woodpecker and nuthatch
yours truly
Across all three locations I noted the following birds species:
jay, nuthatch, long tailed tit, blue tit, great tit, coal tit, blackbird, song thrush, dunnock, robin, greater spotted woodpecker, magpie, mute swan, greylag goose, canada goose, coot, moorhen, pochard, gadwall, tufted duck, mallard, wigeon, black headed gull, red kite.
No comments:
Post a Comment