With cold weather forecast on Monday, I decided to make the most of a sunny afternoon to take a gentle stroll by the River Frome, five minutes away from Stroud town centre. It's a place I visit once a year as there is a very good chance of seeing a dipper or two along the stretch of river which forms the Frome banks nature reserve. Occasionally a grey wagtail is present and there are also reports of kingfishers although I've never seen one there myself.
After parking in the pay and display car park, I crossed over the road and took the path to the canal towpath which I followed for a short distance until it met the footpath which followed the river bank.
Sheltered between two steep banks and with the sun shining through the leaves and branches above me, the afternoon felt very pleasant. It was a peaceful walk alongside the fast flowing stream; only a few other walkers and a couple of people who were picnicking on the table provided half way along.
I walked the relatively short length of the reserve without seeing any water birds, but I did have a good view of a couple of jays. However, returning along the same path, something caught my eye at the edge of the bank across the other side of the water. It was somewhat of a surprise to find it was a male mandarin duck lurking in the shadows! I watched it for a while, wondering what it was doing there and thinking at least there was something to record following my visit as this would be a first for the year. Suddenly there was a bit of splashing a few metres away and out into the open sailed a female mandarin!! The colourful drake swam quickly towards her and they began to mate. |Afterwards I enjoyed watching them as they swam to and fro and fed under the overhanging banks and vegetation.
I continued to make my way slowly back to where I had begun my riverside walk, looking out for movements of a dipper as I went. Nearing the start and about to give up, I suddenly noticed a patch of white against some rocks and a closer inspection revealed a motionless shape of a dipper. If appeared to be asleep, standing on one leg, and every so often it would blink its eyes. Pleased to have found a dipper after all, I decided to wait until it roused, which it did eventually, and after a bit of preening and some bobbing up and down it flew upstream. I walked back to the area where I thought it had stopped but it had disappeared from view. Although I looked both up and downstream, I still couldn't see it so decided to finish my visit there as I was close to the start of the path anyway.
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