Sunday 14 June 2015

Day 14: Visit a local nature reserve


Day 14 and, after a rainy morning, Chickpea and I headed out for a short walk around a local nature reserve. Like many in this area, it's been created from reclaimed industrial land.


I only took a few photos and most of them were around the large flash in the middle of the reserve.



There were at least a couple of pairs of great-crested grebes plus some tufted duck (but they stayed too far out of the reach of my zoom).


And lots of these orchids - marsh orchid?


Ragged Robin


There were also lots of coot families.


I made this short video of the mother calling to them.


In the background of the video, you might have heard another bird. When I looked up this reed warbler was singing away. (Well I think it's a reed warbler)





Long-tailed tit
We did walk around some of the woodland parts of the reserve too but there was nothing really photo-worthy other than a flock of long-tailed tits and a blackcap which was too fast for me.


If only blackcaps were as slow as this snail! I thought it was really unusual with its black body and amber shell.

It's the first time we've visited this reserve but we saw enough to plan to go back at some point and explore some of the other paths. x

6 comments:

  1. This really was a very good wild day out!!! How great that you saw the orchid too! xx

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  2. Lovely day out. That is a nice snail, it looks like a banded snail... I'll have to have a look in my books and see if I can see one that looks like this.

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    1. I've just done a quick 'banded snails' google search and think this snail could be a Grove Snail - scroll down to the collage of 4 pictures toward the bottom, the bottom left pic of three snails has one like this in it!

      http://www.molluscs.at/gastropoda/terrestrial.html?/gastropoda/terrestrial/banded_snails.html

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  3. Nice nature reserve, cool photos. I love the snail one. Baby Coots and Moorhens are so cute at this time of year.

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  4. You took some super photos-so colourful! I love what you saw!x

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  5. I tried to get some photos of blackcaps too recently...but yes your right, they are very fast! Your nature reserve looks a great place to see lots of wildlife.:)

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