A visit to Slimbridge WWT centre today with some friends produced a respectable 46 species, including 4 swan species on the Rushy, nine duck species, and 4 geese species ( we missed the white-fronts). Our first stop was the hide overlooking the Rushy Pen where we saw and heard many Bewick swans. A pair of Whooper swans was also present, together with a mute and a black swan. When I visited earlier in the week the area known as the Tack Piece was frozen and more or less devoid of birds, so it was good to see birds present in huge numbers after the thaw, including lapwing, golden plover, dunlin, redshank and curlew. We also saw a little egret flying and a snipe flew out from the reeds just in front of one of the hides. There were plenty of ducks - my attention was drawn to a mallard which after preening, did a somersault underwater, waving its orange webbed feet above the surface before righting itself and giving a wing flap. It did this several times - I'm not sure if this is the usual pattern! Sadly, there was no water rail under the feeders in the usual place, but on Monday I had seen two behind one of the pools on the South Finger walkway.
From the top of the estuary tower, today, we saw Canada geese, greylags, barnacle geese and a single white Ross's goose. A party of 4 cranes ( 2 adults, 2 juveniles) also flew past and landed on the Tack piece. On our way back we noticed movement in the bushes low down beside the path and were a little surprised to see a song thrush, searching for food, seemingly not bothered by our presence as we stopped to watch.
The spoonbill was asleep as usual on one of the islands on South lake, where we also encountered a great crested grebe, cormorants, ruff and avocets, none of which showed much activity in the cold grey weather.
We decided not to go further as time was getting on, but when I popped into the Kingfisher hide last Monday the bird feeders there, were attracting a number of smaller birds including robin, chaffinches, a coal tit, blue and great tits. A pair of gadwall and a little grebe were on the pool in front of the hide .
It had been a productive day and we had all added to our year lists.
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