Trip reports

Slimbridge

Sunday, 14 January 2007

15 members met for our annual walk to the WWT's main centre, which is always good at any time of the year for seeing birds. By the Big Pen area the wild birds we saw included song thrush, greenfinch and wren. From South Lake hide we had good views of redshank, ruff, dunlin, oystercatcher and many lapwings. Shoveler, wigeon and gadwall were also on show.
South Finger offered great spotted woodpecker among the tits and finches.
After lunch we went to Holden Tower from where we saw spotted redshanks, white-fronted geese, bean goose, pink-foots and Bewick swans. Out on the levels the star birds were a glaucous gull and a great skua.
As the crowds thinned we made our way to the Zeiss hide and had good views of the bittern and some members also saw a water rail. We finished the day with a peregrine passing by. We ended the day with 63 species seen.