I really wasn't sure what kind of weather to expect for my morning at Slimbridge today. Although bright at home, the initial forecast was for cloud followed by some rain at lunch time. As I neared Slimbridge it began to rain but looking towards the west it did look somewhat brighter so I tried to remain optimistic.
However, I was pleased when it had stopped by the time I reached the Centre and the warm temperature soon dried things up. In fact as the morning wore on, the sun appeared and made for a very pleasant day, weatherwise.
In the carpark I checked the Slimbridge twitter feed and read that there were plenty of waders to be seen from the Rushy Hide, in particular some greenshanks which were currently quite close to the hide itself. I made that first stop, as it usually is, and quickly found two greenshanks which were a lot closer than I've seen them before. But they were both asleep! Other waders to be seen included redshanks, black tailed godwits, ruff, lapwing, green sandpiper and avocet.
I made my way up to the Estuary hide where I could see it was high tide. Birds of interest included a wheatear, a hobby and a marsh harrier. There were also at least 9 cranes, curlew and greater black backed gulls.
On my way back I popped in to the Rushy again; there were now 4 greenshanks, two of which came even closer to the hide and allowed some decent photographs compared to the one I took in the CWP recently!
The WWT centre was incredibly quiet I think I only saw a handful of children which I suppose was unsurprising seeing that the school are back. There was only one child on the playground near the Zeiss hide. From this hide, you really need binoculars to see what waders are present on the water, but I did see a spoonbill flying, plus a white Ross's goose with the barnacle goose flock ( a small white goose shape in the distance!) Earlier a bittern had been seen in the reeds but didn't reappear.
My final stop was at the Discovery hide where I had heard there had been a cattle egret as well as some garganey. There was definitely no egret on site now, but I was unsure about the garganey as they would be in eclipse plumage and therefore difficult to pick out. However, a WWT guide appeared and immediately got them in his scope and I was able to find them at the back of the reserve through my binoculars afterwards.
With the sun shining, the buddleia outside the Rushy pen was attracting a number of butterflies; small tortoiseshell, small white, red admiral and three commas.
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