Our birding group visit to Burton Mere Wetlands on 14th April gave us a couple of good Spring birds – the first Swallows of the year and the first Willow Warbler of the year. A nice feature of the scrape was the presence of half a dozen Mediterranean Gulls in full breeding plumage.
Our visit to Marshside this year fell on a lovely, mainly wind-free, sunny day. Although it was obviously low tide, there were still good numbers of birds on the various bodies of water around the reserve. At Marshside we did not see anything especially unusual but after we were done at Marshside, Anne and I…
The last birding group trip for November was to WWT Martin Mere. It was a nice, dry day with great visibility. There was perhaps a lack of birds at some of the hides but we still managed to get 41 species and two year ticks.
The highlight of the month, and perhaps the year, was a visit to Leosowe Lighthouse on the 13th November 2025. We got a life tick and two year ticks on a dry, windless sunny day at the Leosowe horse paddocks and on the promenade there.
The first birding group morning out was to Hoylake where there was supposed to be a high tide of 10 metres at 11:11am. This was only the second good high tide for a while so we changed the Tuesday slot when it would have been high tide at 9:52am to the following Thursday when we hoped that if we got there an hour before, we would be OK. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way but we still had a great day. Read on for more.
We had to go down to Bristol for the funeral of a friend so, to buck ourselves up a bit and to break up the return journey we stopped of at Slimbridge for an overnight stay that allowed us to get an afternoon visit one day and a morning visit the next day.
We had been on holiday in Spain for a couple of weeks at the start of June, so it was the 24th June before we rejoined the birding group when we had a morning out to Burton Mere Wetlands. I say the birding group but there were only four of us! Be that as it…
On the 26th of November the birding group had a day out to WWT Martin Mere. It turned out to be a sunny day with only one, very brief, spattering of rain. We managed to get 39 species of birds at 2 year-tick winter thrushes.
After a lapse in membership, we renewed our subscription to the WWT in order to go to WWT Martin Mere. Would our investment pay off? It did, indeed, with some excellent sightings and a couple of year ticks
We were told by some neighbours who had been out dog walking that two adult Barn Owls and two chicks had been seen in a field near Brookburn school. The weather has been dry some days and wet others so we took the chance on the next day it was dry and we were not disappointed.
