Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall 25th April 2014

Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall 25th April 2014

Although we drove through a number of heavy showers, by the time we got to Shapwick it was fairly bright and it got brighter and warmer as the day progressed. We stopped at the Avalon Centre but it was a very basic collection of portacabins rather than the posh visitor centre we were imagining so we used the facilities, had a look at some information boards and headed off for the car park between Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath reserves.

We decided to start off at Shapwick Heath and walked down to Noah’s water and from the hide we could head a Cetti’s Warbler singing very loudly from just outside. There was also some song that I took to be a Song Thrush but it didn’t sound quite right. It was only later that I started to think that it might have been a Nightingale. Later in the afternoon, over at Hall Wall, a person who appeared to be a reserve employee and who seemed quite knowledgeable suggested that this was highly unlikely to be the case because they are not usually present there and also the habitat was too wet for them. We did meet another birding group leader who claimed he had heard a Nightingale along the Ham Wall long path so who knows ? There were a few birds on the water but nowhere near as many as we had seen in the same spot last year so we thought we would try our luck over at the woodland hide.
Apart from a couple of Mallards on the water the place was empty and I suspect that nobody goes to that hide to see birds on the water. It is much more likely that they go there for the extensive view of the reedbeds and the birds that fly over them. We did see two of the likely candidates from this hide. The first was a Marsh Harrier that was gliding over the reeds and coming very close to us so we got good, long views and nice sunlight. We didn’t see a Bittern there but we did just catch a Great Egret as it hove into view passing left to right in the distance looking very large even at this distance. The wings were clearly of a totally different order to those of a Little Egret and, of course, there are plenty of them in this area.
After a while we decided to walk back down to the car park and over to Ham Wall and as we did so we could hear numerous Cetti’s Warblers, Reed Warblers and Blackcaps. In fact the bird song was so constant that sometimes it was a problem to concentrate on one bird without being distracted by another burst of song. And all the time there was the constant and magical sound of a Cuckoo calling and Bitterns booming. At the end of the day we had seen neither but reckoned we had heard at least three Cuckoos and more Bitterns.
We stopped off at the two pools of water on the left on the way back and there were a smattering of birds on the water, most notably a large collection of Black-tailed Godwits, now coming into lovely brick red chest plumage. Quick stop at the car to cast off some unrequired clothing as the weather had got quite hot, and it was off down the old railway track that runs through Ham Wall. Again there was the constant bird song as Warblers, Finches, Wrens and Blackbirds competed for “acoustic airspace”.
As we walked down the railway track and approached the hides on the right hand side we caught sight of what appeared to be a Great Egret so we headed off down to the hides and at the end one we managed to locate not one, but two flying an=round and occasionally settling before eventually disappearing. When we returned to platform one, we met a chap who said to us that he had just seen a Cuckoo in the tree above the path to the hides that we had just been in but he must have meant some time previously. We had been listening to Cuckoos all morning and if one had called so near to us we must surely have heard that. We concluded that he had lost track of time and that it must have been before we arrived there. He also said that there had been Hobbies flying over but that was on the opposite side of the hide to that where we had been watching the Egrets – ho hum !
On a more positive note he did tell us about a pair of Garganey that he had spotted from the second platform but he said that they were a long way away and hard to see. We were going up there anyway so we had a look and, as it happens, they were much closer than they had been when he saw them so we got very good views. At one point the male and the female formed a sort of quadrangle with a male and female Gadwall and it was instructive to see them arranged thus. Also useful was to see them next to Teal where the Garganey’s diminutive size was clear.

Bird Sightings : Shapwick Heath

Bird Sightings : Ham Wall