One of the main reason for our visit to Somerset was to visit RSPB Ham Wall a reserve I've always wanted to see! We arrived reasonably early, sadly the weather was very grey and we had some drizzle, obviously you realise I'm just getting my excuses in early for the poor quality of the pics!😅We decided to head for the Avalon hide, the walk takes you through a great landscape of Reedbeds and open water! A few of Margie's pics below.
A beautiful place even in the gloom!
We saw lots of Dragonflies on the way to the hide, we took a couple of small diversions down side tracks, couple of Marsh Harriers, a Lesser Black-backed Gull stood out, but the highlight was a Great Crested Grebe getting a lot of grief from it's almost full grown offspring!
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| Little Grebe |
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| Lesser Black-backed Gull |
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| Cormorant drying his wings, or demonstrating to the Black-headed Gull how big the last fish he caught was? you decide!😃 |
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| Mute Swan |
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| Impressive Dragonfly possibly a Migrant Hawker |
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| Parent Great Crested Grebe getting grief from the young un! |
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| Gimme food! |
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| Glastonbury Tor |
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| Marsh Harrier |
We arrived at the hide, plenty to see here, over about an hour we saw 2 Glossy Ibis, a Green Sandpiper, 8 Snipe, a Kingfisher, 3 Water Rail, Little Egret and a very showy Great White Egret.
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| Snipe, these ones haven't read the Camouflage manual! |
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| Great Egret |
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| Green Sandpiper |
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| Snipe |
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| Little Egret |
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| Great Egret |
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| Just swallowed a large fish! |
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| Kingfisher, always distant! |
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| Water Rail |
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| Glossy Ibis |
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| Being a bit Glossy! |
We dragged ourselves away from the hide as we headed down the path, a guy told us the Purple Heron was on show!! This seemed unlikely and so it proved!
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| Grey Heron |
While I broke everyone's heart with my skepticism😀Come on Purple Heron standing on a wooden beam for 10 minutes!!! Apparently this bird has been causing a bit of confusion, with the two Purple Herons that have been giving flyby views for the last couple of weeks. On the plus side the group was treated to an Osprey flying by!
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| Osprey |
At this point, we crossed the road onto Shapwick Heath in pursuit of the Arctic Tern, that has been loitering for a while as not seen one this year, Soon found it buzzing about in front of the hide on Noah's Lake.
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| Arctic Tern |
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| Mute Swan by Margie |
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| Tadpole, slightly larger than the ones in our pond! |
All in all a very successful visit, shame about the grey skies made the pics all a bit dark and gloomy, but you can't win em all!!
