The Safari was planning to go north but with IH out of commission new boy AB was invited to take his place but said due to motorway nightmares north was going to be an issue so CR pointed the car southwards to meet him at Martin Mere instead. It wasn't a bad day, a bit of sunshine and not too much wind. First up we headed to the Feeding Station where very little was happening, the feeders were full but devoid of life so we didn't hang around continuing on to the nerw set of hides. On the way the sunshine had brought out a nice mature, or should that be ageing, male Common Darter.
It was in the melee that we heard a call and then spotted a Spotted Redshank among the throng - not a bad sighting for here as they're not that frequent a visitor. Sadly we only saw it on the ground miles away hidden among the Teal. According to another birder in the hide there had been two present earlier in the morning. The Teal were still a bit flighty but we couldn't find anything exotic among them when they took to the air.
They didn't settle nearby for closer inspection from the next hide either, the closest ones being well away to our right and most of them landed on the far side of the pool.
Carrying on there was little happening down the track to the final hide until we rounded the last bend and looked for the Stonechats that are always about. The male was camera shy today but the female did pose briefly on the fence post close to the hide.
Stars of the show here though were the Cattle Egrets that flew in and some did what they're supposed to do, landed on the Longhorn Cattle.
There were several in the flock, maybe double figures but they were very easily spooked and flew off to another group of cattle grazing away across the fields. After enjoying this relatively new 'Mediterranean' spectacle we headed back to the car to grab the butties/pies and other goodies. While walking back a couple of smallish groups of Pink Footed Geese flew over us, obviously they were checked for the Snow Goose as it had left with a group of Pink Feet.
They'd landed some way off and finding it was going to be tricky, we had to wait until they put their heads up but most of them were content to graze or just relax. It is in the pic above so see if you can spot it.
Butties were munched in the Discovery Hide - it's the one closest to the car park! While eating lunch there's always the dilemma - what happens if something good turns up mid bite??? Pies win all the time that's what happens, whatever it is will have to wait until the last crumbs of pastry have been chomped. As it was nothing much of over excitement was happening so there were no dilemmas today. After finishing our butties we had a look round at what was on offer. New in Whooper Swans looked lonely, no doubt their friends will be joining them in the next day or so.
A handful of fresh-in Pintails were on the water too. Still not yet coloured up after their post-breeding moult.
We always like to get a pic of the Coots and Mallards that grace this pool and today was no exception. The main challenge is to capture the bright red eye of the Coots
and anything slightly different with the Mallards - hardly different but this one does have a few droplets of water on his face.
AB spotted the best action although it wasn't from the hide it was within the hide - just. Hanging from the door frame was a Garden Cross Spider's web on which was some very gentle courtship action going on. The male on the left trying his best to transfer his genes to the next generation without becoming lunch beforehand. The precarious dance with death was taking a while so we left them to it and so don't know the outcome.
Outside the hide warm sunshine saw a Red Admiral on the wing as we made our way down to the Ron Barker Hide
It was busy in there which wasn't surprising as social media over the previous few days had pics of all manner of good things posted from there, Kingfishers, a male Hen Harrier, Bittern, lots of Cattle Egrets, Stoat, Roe Deer, and of course the regular day-flying Barn Owl. We settled in to our seat and watched and waited, hopefully the Stoat would come out on the bridge, we've not had a good view of one anywhere for ages, we're pretty sure the last one we did was this one on the bridge. We did see one very briefly a few weeks ago when it dashed across the road in front of the car. All the action was on the pool to the right across the dyke, the pool in front of us was lacking in life until someone in the hide pointed out the Roe Deer right at the back that had come out of hiding.
There were three of them but we could only ever get two in frame at any one time.
A tractor appeared from the left about to do some work, the lad stopped at the pumphouse to rake loose vegetation from the outflow before driving on. Once he was out of view a ginormous flock of Pink Footed Geese appeared, he'd disturbed them from a more distant field - what a sight and what a sound. This is just a fraction of them
Unlike many of the recent Social Media pics we didn't see them demolishing the local populations of Frogs and Toads. CR had also been getting some good close pics of a Kestrel hovering over the field but it wasn't for coming our way. And when it did it wan't that close and the light was deteriorating rapidly now.
It was after taking these shots and thinking they're not as sharp as they could be we inspected our camera kit and discovered we needed a brillo pad to clean the salt spray left over from the cruise off the front of the lens, caked on thick it was. Any of our younger readers (do we have younger readers?) probably won't know what a brillo pad is having been brought up on automatic dishwashers, its a wire wool (metal scraping tool) doused in strong detergent for getting baked-on lasagne/cottage pie off your favourite oven proof dish...perfect for getting salt spray off expensive lenses!
Our friends from the cruise were here too, waiting for the Bittern to show and unlike most Bitterns it has been very showy. striding around on the bank in front of these Canada Geese and sleeping Whooper Swans.
Sadly for them it was a no-show and they had to leave to go to another appointment - it was a no-show for us too. We still had a bit of time left so decided to have another look for the Snow Goose at the other side of the reserve so retraced our steps back that way passing a gorgously autumn coloured Maple along the nature trail on the way. The tree has unusally shaped leaves for a Maple, almost Oak-like, and we think it might be Paper Bark Maple.
A quick look at the Feeding Station revealed as much (or as little) life as was there first thing in the morning, the light at the Harrier Hide was horrendously glary so we didn't stay more than a minute. Maybe we should have done as the Snow Goose was seen from there the following day holed up with the big flock of feral Grey Lag Geese...which was all we saw on our quick look....should we have given the glare a go? Was it there? We'll never know.
Our last port of call was the nearby Rees hide where a commotion of Teal had us looking up for a raptor but was actually caused by a Heron striding out of the reeds and frightening them.
It's probably a good job IH wasn't with us as he bats for Team Heron and today they were convincingly knocked out of the park by prodigious numbers of egrets.
Where to next? Back up north next time.
In the meantime let us know who's trampling all over the ungulates in your outback
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