Trip reports
Trip to Westhay - Somerset Levels
Sunday, 7 December 2008
We normally visit Ashcott at the end of April but we decided to visit a few places in winter for a chance of seeing different birds. On a frozen morning 16 members met in Westhay car park for a visit, first to Westhay, although the sun was out and it was blue skies the temperature was -2 when we left the car park as we arrived at the education hide all the water was still frozen. We saw a couple of Snipe skating over the ice before they took off. We left the hide and walked along the footpath towards London Drove turning right to go and look out of the view point again only snipe were seen. As we walked up the path back towards the main path the group split into two with most people walking on to London drove and a few staying back looking for Redpoll and Siskin which were heard by the path, this group found both birds and then made their way towards London Drove finding a Redwing and female Bullfinch on the way and a Water rail was also seen. The main group had reached the path from London Drove to the hide and were having great views of a Kingfisher when the rest caught up, a quick look out of the hide revealed only frozen water so we then made our way back to London Drove where we turned left and walked along towards the bridge over the drain. The lakes on the left hand side we still frozen except in a few places where water could be seen . We saw plenty of Kingfishers and a couple more Water rails but could not find any Goosanders which seem to spend winter at West hay . Along the path we also saw Treecreeper, Songthrush, and plenty of woodland birds. Returning along the path we also got Reed bunting, as we turned off London Drove left and walked back along the path to the car park we all got close up views in the telescopes of both Redpoll and Siskin on reaching the cars we had lunch before driving over to Ashcott at Westhay we saw 37 speices
At Ashcott corner we parked up, the car park was full so most had to park along the road, as we had about 2 hours before the Starling roost we walked towards the 2 tanks on the Mere side. On the drained tank we saw a Water pipit that was lit up in the sunlight showing it markings off very nicely along the path we also had a couple of Chiffchaffs , we then crossed over to Ham wall reserve as at the time of the visit this is where the Starlings were roosting.
As we reached the RSPB viewing platform to wait for the Starlings we looked out over the lakes we saw Shoveler,Wigeon, Gadwall, amongst hundreds of Coot. A kingfisher was flying around for quite awhile. A Marsh Harrier flew across the back of the reserve, as the light started to fade a Green Woodpecker flew past us. The Starlings then started to appear but flew across Ham wall and off towards Mere. Thousands of Starlings were flying straight over in big flocks but not coming in to the reserves reed beds. As the light started to go, people down the track, back towards the car park shouted that the Starlings were coming back and started to drop down into the reeds between the viewpoint and car park. We walked back along the track to see the hundreds of thousands of Starlings dropping down to just above the reeds then they just circled around before dropping into the reeds you could hear the wing beats, it sounded just like running water. We had a very good day, very cold but sunny. The Starlings were very good and in all we had 52 species. It was certainly worth visiting this time of the year as we normally go around April time