Trip reports

Greylake Moor - Tuesday 28 July 2009

Tuesday, 4 August 2009

Becky gave a brief outline of the work that has been done on the site and was very pleased to inform everyone that this had been a particularly productive year for some of the breeding birds with thirteen lapwing nests producing 27 surviving chicks and seven successful nests of redshanks. Snipe and curlew had also fared well, but there were fewer yellow wagtails present this year.
The reserve seemed to have a good number of buzzards that were perched on posts and gates as well as soaring overhead and a pair of kestrels swooped and hovered over a tractor that was obviously disturbing a good deal of prey.
Three yellow wagtails were seen briefly by some of the party as they picked around among the feet of grazing cattle, and among othere species seen were swifts, swallows, house martins, moorhen, coot, mallard, heron, little egret, mute swan, cormorant and a little grebe family that was sharing ther pool in front of the hide with a family of coot.
One of the main interests of the day was the abundance of butterflies out on the meadows and many species were identified.
Some of the party then moved on to Ashcott Corner and Ham Wall where they saw more butterflies, several species of wildfowl in eclipse plumage, a gathering of over a dozen little egrets plus cormorants, great crested grebes and large numbers of swifts overhead.
Highlight, however, was discovered on the way back to the car park when a great white egret that had been seen for some time recently, suddenly appeared on one of the scrapes where it remained in view for at least a quarter of an hour before it got up and disappeared among the reed beds. Certainly the bird of the day and great way to finish off any field trip.