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Saturday, 15 January 2011

Group Visit: The big bird watch at the new hide on Buckenham Marsh

The first meeting of 2011 saw us heading to Buckenham Marshes for our Big Bird Watch. We met on a grey Saturday morning in January in the car park full of enthusiasm for our winter's walk to the new hide by the river. We set up several scopes and tested the children's knowledge by getting them to identify the birds they could see on the marshes. Everyone had a checklist to see how many they could find and to add any birds they could see that weren't on the list too. There were sighting of regular visitors such as moorhen, coot, and mute swans. We saw several of the birds that are known to spend their winter in Britain including barnacle and greylag geese, wigeon, and teal. A flock of lapwing flew over us and a flock of what was thought to be golden plover too while a distant Marsh Harrier entertained as it danced in the sky. There was a little confusion as we used our bird guides to work out the differences between shoveler and shelduck. It wouldn't be a visit to Buckenham without seeing a few rooks anda lucky few heard the beautiful song of a single skylark. There was even a rarity for us too on the river, a red necked grebe, something few of us had seen before. So all in all it was quite a morning.