A wildlife-rich mosaic of habitats with free parking and a Visitor Centre just off the A1
Image by aaandreasss, CC BY-ND 2.0 Latin name: Turdus merula It has very few local names, but I have located blackjack (male) (Surrey), black thrush (Yorkshire), garden ousel (Cheshire) and colly (Somerset). We all grew up with the nursery rhyme “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”, and just about every species from sparrows… Read More
If you want to hear a chiffchaff, now is the time to walk around the reserve. They are in full song. A recent visitor to the reserve who had written their sightings in the bird sighting’s book in the Visitor Centre recorded 20 singing chiffchaffs on his walk! We are now in Spring, and the… Read More
Image by Corine Bliek, CC BY-NC 2.0 There has never been a time in my long birdwatching life that I have not been involved with this large and perhaps most attractive sawbill. This species has a very interesting history in the UK. It was widely persecuted in Scotland, but eventually bred successfully in Perthshire in… Read More
Sparrowhawk display flights If you have a feeder in your garden, you might have been lucky enough to see a sparrowhawk swooping through to snatch an unsuspecting blue tit. Spring is the best time of year to see sparrowhawks behaving differently. In preparation for the breeding season, they make long display flights quite high in… Read More
Image by Natural England, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Latin name: Egretta garzetta This beautiful, elegant bird is a small white member of the heron family, which comprises of 60 species and can be found on every continent except Antarctica. The Little Egret is now widespread in Europe, where the birds which breed in the north of… Read More
