Holiday Day 4 Steart Marshes

 Today we headed up to the Steart Marshes, wide open spaces, big skies and a bit of sunshine, hurrah!!! Seemed a bit dry to be honest, the drought has affected it for sure. But we had a lovely walk and did see some good birds, highlights being Cattle Egrets and a very friendly Wheatear! Margie's Camera captures the landscape far better than mine her pics below!

Hinkley Point, Margie did her usual there's a Crane joke!! When I fell for it first time it was actually a digger!!

A few of my pics below!

Cattle Egret with Cattle, sadly distant

Can usually rely on a Wheatear to pose well!

Load of Avocets on the river!

Kestrel getting grief from a Crow

Wall Butterfly

Raven

The reserve is very nice, with excellent hides and well laid paths but very few birds while we were there!! But at least it was flat! Having walked about 4 miles around the reserve Margie was well up for another yomp out to Steart Point😁😂😱!! The drive up to the furthest car park, produce a nice Whinchat on a fence, sadly only got one shot and that was through the windscreen!!

Don't think it will win any prizes, but you can just about tell it's a Whinchat

Things picked up a bit bird wise on the walk out to the point, a few Stonechats, a Raven eating a dead Rabbit, a Marsh Harrier over the huge read bed and several flyover Curlews among the highlights! 

Raven

Curlew

Stonechat

Stonechat

Marsh Harrier

Marsh Harrier getting grief

Trust Margie to go for the grisly Raven eating a dead Rabbit shot!

A very impressive reedbed adjacent to the path

Curlew

We arrived at the point, bit disappointing to find a permit was needed to get to the point and access the hides, luckily I'm very law abiding so didn't jump the fence! We were allowed in the tower hide which allowed views over the Bristol Channel and on to Wales. There were hundreds of Shelduck coming out of the River Parrot estuary, I have never seen so many!!

Tower Hide

Possibly Cardiff!

Shelducks

Seemed to be non stop stream of them coming out on to the mud

Another Wall Butterfly

The drive back along the road saw a group of Egrets in a field a mixture of Cattle and Little Egret!

Cattle Egret

Cattle Egret

Little Egret and Cattle Egret 

Having dragged her around for the best part of six miles it was time to head back to the Hot Tub before Margie murdered me!!

 

Holiday Day 3 Seaton Wetlands

 Day 3 saw us hop over the border to Devon to the Seaton Wetlands, another reserve I had heard of but never visited, if anything the weather was even greyer, though less drizzle!  It's a nice reserve with some good hides, best birds were a Wood Sandpiper, Spotted Redshank, Greenshank with lots of other Waders present. A flock of Terns flew in and we saw another Kingfisher, but it didn't hang around for pictures!! 

Redshank with Wood Sandpiper behind

Wood Sandpiper

Dunlin

Common Tern, I think!

Redshank

Margie got a few shots across the reserve!

This Black-tailed Godwit had a good preen

Dunlin

Spotted Redshank

We popped into the visitor centre, from the hide there I saw a Reed Warbler but the reported Kingfisher didn't show up! They had some Harvest Mice in a tank, apparently there is a healthy population on the reserve. Margie thought they were cute but forgot to take any pics, so you have been denied the pleasure!

Reed Warbler

Robin

Young Greenshank, there was an adult knocking about as well, but I didn't get a pic

Moorhen swam across the front of the tower hide, we had a Water Rail and Kingfisher from here as well but they didn't pose for pics

Common Buzzard

Chiffchaff

Canada Geese

Reed Bunting

An enjoyable few hours. On leaving the reserve we thought we would head into Lyme Regis for a bite to eat, however Lyme Regis was full!! The nearest Car Park where there was a space was about a mile from the centre and at the top of an extremely steep hill, while I'm a big fan of walking down steep hills the thought of walking back up it decided us against it!! Luckily on driving around we spotted a sign for River Cottage, I quite enjoy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's books and TV Programmes so we thought we'd check it out! River Cottage HQ was duly found and we found ourselves enjoying a very tasty lunch, wasn't even that pricey in the scheme of things and the food was very nice. I also invested in a couple of bottles of organic cider which were also very tasty!!!

River Cottage HQ 

Chocolate Brownie, Gluten Free, actually not the best Brownie I've had, bit stodgy and not gooey enough in the middle, though it was tasty!

Pork Belly, lots of fat, melted in the mouth, Potato Wedges, possibly the nicest wedges I've ever had and a sort of pickled Coleslaw which was delicious

Margie went for the Yogurt Pannacotta, which she said was delicious, especially the Honeycomb. I can confirm the bit of Honeycomb I nicked was tasty!

Kedgeree, Margie said it was tasty, though should have been more fish and got a bit samey after awhile, think she was jealous of my Pork Belly to be honest!  

A very nice meal, the staff were very friendly as well, we decided to call it a day and headed back to base for an evening of Cider and Hot Tub! Still no pics sorry!!!