Staveley and Nosterfield

Only a few hours for birding today so I decided to go to 2 fairly local reserves.

I arrived at Staveley at 1030 in warm autumn sunshine.

The field that was full of flowers on my last visit has now been cut

so has the field with the apple trees.

As I walked to the first hide I passed through some woodland, which had a lot of small birds in it. Long tailed tits, great, blue and coal tits and a young willow warbler.

From the first hide I saw the mute swan family along with greylag and Canada geese.

As I walked to the next hide a sedge warbler flew across the path. From the hide I could see lapwings on the rafts where the common terns had nested. Lapwings were also on an island with cormorants and mallards.

No birds to be seen from the reedbed hide, so I decided to return to my car. On the way back I saw this butterfly and dragonfly.

Robins pin cushion

Nosterfield was my next stop. I walked to Lingham lake and on the way I was disappointed to see that the dead tree that a little owl was often perched on had been cut down.

Plenty of dragonflies.

I could only see mute swans on the lake, so I went to the other lake. On the way back to the car I saw more signs of autumn.

The hides are still closed, so this is the view from the screen.

I counted 167 curlews, some are in this photo

some of the curlew were closer along with some ruff.

The yellow feet of this little egret stood out in the sunshine.

A few house martins were feeding over the lake as they made their journey south.