Steart Marshes 28th August 2016

Steart Marshes 28th August 2016

WIth three nights at Montacute we had a chance to visit a site that we had both read a lot about and also seen TV clips on – the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site at Steart Marshes. This is a recently created wetland between Bridgewater Bay and the River Parrett. This river had in recent years been the source of much flooding in the are and this reserve was an attempt to mitigate the effects of high tides and storm on the surrounding land. You can read more about it here. and find a map of the site here.

We were a bit slow in getting going and when we arrived there it was raining quite heavily. We waited in the car park until it was easing off, taking adavantage of the toilets there which are brand new and wonderful. When we deciding that it was dry enough to set off, we started by taking the “wetland walkway walk” but we veered off a bit half way through, to walk down to the river befoire returning to the “wetland walkway walk”. There a number of hides there and as we walked around them the tide was coming in and by the time we got to the river it was pretty much high tide, though obviously not a Spring Tide. We didn’t have time to walk all the way up to the breach or even touch much of the site which is huge and would take at least a day to explore properly but the taste we got convinced us that this is going to be an amazing reserve in the future, whetehr in spring or winter.

At the first hide (the Mendip Hide) we got some Little Egrets and a Curlew but most of the birds seemed to be rather distant. As we walked along the path, though, we got to a raised part that overlooks one of the ponds and on here there were quite a lot of waders with large numbers of Ringed Plovers and Dunlins, Three Greenshanks and a Common Sandpiper.

There were plenty of Swallows and House MArtins around and we got the odd Wheatear but the best was a “year tick” of Sparrowhawk which we got a couple of views of. Again perhaps not the busiest day for birds but if we had spent more time there we probably could have got more and the site is certain to mature into a WWT treasure in the future. I think we will definitely be back – perhaps even in the winter !

Bird Sightings : Steart Marshes