Visit to Arlingham and Slimbridge Village : 22nd June 2011 We were scheduled to attend a wedding on the 24th June at Montacute in Somerset so we decided to break up our journey by stopping off at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire. On our way there we took a bit of a detour to look at a…
Birding Group Visit to Rixton Clay Pits : 21st June 2011 This week’s birding group visit was to Rixton Clay Pits, a former clay extraction point now turned over to angling and parts of it are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The general feel of the area is scrubland / woodland with a big…
“The Secret Lives of Garden Birds” by Dominic Couzens I came across a first edition hardback copy of this book at our local Oxfam shop so I only paid £3.99p for it which was quite a bargain. I mainly know of Dominic Couzens from his regular features in “Bird Watching” magazine where he specialises in…
Day Out To RSPB Lake Vyrnwy Nature Reserve : 16 June 2011 We had stayed the previous night at a hotel in LLongollen because we had been on the Nightjar walk in the Coed LLandegla Forest until midnight so we didn’t want to travel back to Manchester late at night. This meant we had a…
Day Out To RSPB Coed Llandegla Forest : 15 June 2011 We had heard about the RSPB walks at this forest when we were at RSPB Conwy where they had a leaflet about various attractions under the moniker “A date with nature”. Two of these attractions took place at the Coed Llandegla Forest near Llangollen…
Birding Group Visit to Neumann’s Flash : 7th June 2011 The weather held up for our birding group visit to Neumann’s Flash (part of the Northwich Woodland Area) and rained just a little towards lunchtime. As soon as we parked up we saw a Kestrel high in the sky. As we waited for the others…
Day Out To WWT Martin Mere : 6th June 2011 A good day out at Martin Mere. We started off by going straight down to hide H3 – the Ron Barker Hide where we saw a lot of the usual suspects. Particular birds of interest we saw were a single Whooper Swan. This was a…
Day Out To Lymm Dam : 5th June 2011 We wanted a walk within a short drive from home so we decided to go to Lymm Dam. The weather was a bit damp and a little rain fell from time to time but we were able to walk around the main part of the site…
“Tracks and Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe” by Roy Brown, John Ferguson, Michael Lawrence and David Lees . I have just finished reading this fantastically detailed book. The title pretty much says it all – it is a field guide to help identify the habitats, remains and signs of life resulting from…
Garden and General The month started with a warm and dry but very windy spell. By the middle of the month some rain had set in and the weather was generally changeable with some heavy downpours at times. We hope we are winning the war with the neighbouring cat but now we cannot put any…
