RSPB Old Moore : 10th July 2015

RSPB Old Moore : 10th July 2015

With the end of the birding group term, we have been looking for interesting places to go for short days out. Recent reports of sightings at RSPB Old Moore encouraged us; a possibly breeding Little Bittern seen many times over several days, an American Wigeon and a Gull-billed Tern were all birds we would be very happy to see. Unfortunately we didn’t see any of these but we were not on our own and even several days later the Little Bittern had, like the other birds, not been seen since. On the positive side we did get a lovely “year tick”

Be that as it may it was a glorious day unlike our only other visit there when it was very wet indeed. We turned up at the reception which is in a nice converted barn that has a shop, a cafe and toilets all housed in the same building. I can’t say that the food was any good but it was nice to have somewhere to sit down.

We started out for the “Bittern Hide” which had been rammed for days; in fact the reserve had started opening up early in the morning and staying open late to accommodate those interested in seeing the very rare Little Bittern. If we thought we were unlucky not to see it, pity the bloke that said he had made nine visits to see and he had failed every time. The rare bird services continued to report it two or three times a day but the glory days of its first arrival when it posed several feet up in bushes for all to see were long gone and most sightings were of it briefly flying over the reserve.

We sat for a while but there was so much chatter in the hide that I got bored and we walked further up the path to a sort of bus shelter with seats on a raised bend in the path that afforded good views over the top of the reed bed. Unfortunately, because they thought that they might have a schedule 1 bird breeding in the reed bed, they had closed the path off that goes round the back of the reed bed. We had to content ourselves with a walk back towards reception and then down along the other path that holds several hides.

At one of these hides we did get nice views of a pair of Avocet chicks and a good number of Sand Martins. There was a reasonable smattering of birds around – even if they were mostly Black-headed Gulls – and we did get about thirty species – perhaps a little more.

The highlight of the day, though, was getting really good views of two Garden Warblers in some shrubbery, collecting insects and apparently oblivious to the increasing crowd that had stopped on the path for fear of flushing them. As it happened, they were so intent on feeding that they were unconcerned about the humans about to we got great views of a bird I have only seen once before !

As the afternoon wore on we decided that we should leave to beat the Friday rush hour traffic on the way back. How mistaken we were as we got bogged down in a terrible slow down near Tintwhistle. We need to remember that it might be better to go to via Glossop nest time not Tintwhistle.

Bird Sightings : RSPB Old Moore