RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands : 21st July 2015

RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands : 21st July 2015

We filled in a spare Tuesday morning with a visit to Burton Mere Wetlands. It was a fairly overcast day but this can sometimes be useful at this site as bright sunlight causes a lot of glare. A quick look at the main scrape revealed the usual high numbers of Black-tailed Godwits nut there were also a couple of Ruff and a pair of Little Ringed Plovers. The ducks were all in eclipse plumage already. We had heard that there had been a Tawny Owl spotted by the fishing pond so we decided to have a look around there.

Apparently here is an adult and a young bird (so presumably at least three in all) roosting in a tall Birch tree quite a long way up. If you walk by the side of the fishing pond but don’t go down the ramp, turn right along the end of the pool about two thirds of the way down. If you turn your back to the pool and look through the trees you see the very tall Birch Tree. It has usually been seen there but it was a bit windy so that may explain why it wasn’t there when we looked. As a consolation we got a Great Spotted Woodpecker

Anyway, we walked up to the Marsh Covert hide where the water had pretty much disappeared. A few Grey Herons were loafing around but the best sighting was of a group of around fifty Little Egrets, mostly huddled together, in the water towards the Inner Marsh Farm area.

We walked up in that direction stopping to get a bit of a closer look at them further along the path but by then they had split up a bit. We did get two Common Sandpipers from one of the Blinds.Going uphill towards the point there were a great number of Goldfinches everywhere and perhaps a Blackcap but I didn’t see that one bird. A Chiffchaff or two were singing still.

Up in the field at the Point the sheep had moved on and were now down in the marsh. A number of House Martins were feeding just a little over the grass. There wasn’t really that much up there so we wandered down to the Inner Marsh Farm hide where there were even more Black-tailed Godwits but amongst them were four Spotted Redshanks, now with their dark plumage just a darker grey than their winter “coats”. There was also a couple of dozen Dunlin and a smattering of ducks. Two Ruff appeared seemingly out of nowhere and a pair of Avocets still remained. It seems they had a reasonably good breeding season.

We headed back and had a look for the Tawny Owl, this time accompanied by a site volunteer we got talking to so we knew we were looking in the right place because he had seen it there several times. We still didn’t see it but we had a good morning, a good walk and a variety of birds; nothing wildly special but a good morning at Burton as usual.

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetland : Environs

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetland : Reception Hide

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetland : Marsh Covert Hide

Bird Sightings : Burton Mere Wetland : Inner Marsh Farm