It is such a strange sensation returning to blogging, and indeed strange returning to nature watching after a near half year away. Mid-May was my last blog post, since then a combination of booking too many events during the summer, writing my daily blog (now ended), becoming membership secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society, joining the John Moore Society after being invited to be a guest at their AGM and unplanned hospital fiddling's by surgeons, somehow the summer passed me by without a single day out watching wildlife. And then like busses, this weekend I partook in two days back-to-back outdoors. Steart Marshes on Saturday and WWT Slimbridge Sunday.
I have something of a love-hate relationship with Steart Marshes. Every time I've visited I've seen maybe 5 or 6 species of bird, mostly dark specks miles away on the mud of the Bristol Channel. This reserve is best at high tide, therefore on Saturday I found myself there just before a very high 4.7m tide. That brought the birds in, but they are still an awfully long way away from the various viewing platforms dotted about. Not that I was complaining as Saturday was warm and sunny after a night of torrential rain.
Starlings are now beginning to gather with small murmurations taking place as I walked about. Good numbers of gulls, lapwing and mixed corvid flocks much in evidence too. I could hear redshank somewhere but never really saw them, small flocks of meadow pipit and linnet too. Overhead a solitary skylark sang, which was welcome for mid October. In total I walked about 5km, the most I've walked for months and it felt good to be out again watching the numerous dragonflies buzzing around me.
To be honest I had planned to do a morning sitting still and watching, but on this perfect autumnal day, walking continuously was the end result of my endeavours. I even abandoned thoughts of sitting watching the River Parrett from a welcoming bench half way through the ramble. The river was full, that was a high tide indeed.
Once again the rain came overnight Saturday and it hammered down, as it seems to do every two days at the moment. Sunday dawned dry but everything was dripping wet. I was on a pre-planned visit to Slimbridge with my ex-NHU radio friends. We'd arranged to go to Bredon Hill to look for ring ouzel, however the forecast was for Storm Ashley to barrel herself across the countryside today - Bredon is not known for offering any shelter so we rearranged to visit Slimbridge (the café, facilities and watertight hides a bonus at our advanced time of life). I got to Slimbridge at about 9.30am and, though overcast, it was very pleasant, not least as a flock of redwing seep-seep'd across the car-park. I've been hearing them for about a fortnight at home.
My friends arrived half an hour later (I'd not seen the email saying 10am start) and we set off. I'm assuming the media attention for Storm Ashley meant that the fear of Armageddon conspired to keep everyone away - Slimbridge was gloriously quiet all day. Birding wise it was excellent as always, 50+ snipe just metres away from the Rushy hide, where good numbers of black tailed godwit, pintail, mallard, redshank, coot, moorhen, teal, wigeon, greylag and Canada geese were enriched by a passing marsh harrier, lapwing and starling. It is still a little early for the winter swans, mid November is when the Bewick's return.
We then wandered up to the Estuary Tower where high tide at 11am was bringing everything up onto the fields, including Storm Ashley. We'd only been there about ten minutes when I noticed Wales disappearing behind advancing rain. At that point we were on the open viewing platform at the very top and had been having superb views of three spotted redshank. Within five minutes the rain began, joined at the hip by very strong gusty winds. A squally front was on it's way through - so squally that the fire alarms in the Estuary hide were triggered, not once but twice. We hunkered down and sat it out, it was like being inside a huge washing machine, it's a long time since I've seen such violent rain bursts, the hide windows were dribbling onto the floor which soon became quite wet. But then as quickly as it arrived, the rain front left and the sun came out, remaining with us until 5pm when I left.
Slimbridge never disappoints despite being a focal point reserve. The captive areas, such as the avocet-ruff-redshank combination above are fascinating and great for allowing families to get close to birds. But it is the wild areas which bring in a lot of interesting passage migrants, we even found a greenshank, in amongst some redshank. Actually that was one of the highlights of the day, in one single view, redshank, spotted redshank and greenshank next to each other. Another highlight being a fence hosting 30+ rooks, one perched on every post facing the wind and sitting it out. We were told that a curlew sandpiper was out on the estuary somewhere, we never did try to find it, but did see the Ross hybrid Snow goose which has been about for a while.
All in all though it was a very good day and a very good weekend being out again. I was tired though by the end of the day at Slimbridge. I've been used to comfy chairs, afternoon naps and tartan slippers for too long this year. But it felt good to be getting buffeted out there, sun blasted or pummelled by rain. It must have good as it had the affect of inspiring me to write again after all these months. As my consultant said to me over the summer, sadly you are now medically classed as a geriatric, things will happen to you. Well that may be the case, but it's good to be alive, even if I continue to struggle to get my socks on in the morning.
