Two Norths

 Now that bird hides are now open I decided to visit North Cave Wetlands. It was fairly quiet when I arrived with only a few cars in the car park. The little butty van was not there, which may have accounted for the lack of vehicles. I parked at the far end of the road, near Crosslands hide.

As you can see from the photo it was a cloudy day with showers of rain. The water level on the scrape is fairly low and it was a pleasant change not to see and here lots of black headed gulls. On the scrape were mute swans, greylag geese with fairly large goslings, lapwings, little ringed plovers, redshank. No sign of the wood sandpiper that has been present recently.

Common terns were fishing.

The drake garganey came out of the reeds and had a sleep and then a preen.

I then walked along the path at the edge of the reserve and added wren, blackcap, chaffinch and cetti's warbler to my list. The cetti's flew too quickly for me to get a photo.

 I joined another chap in the next hide and keeping our distance we managed to get some photos of whitethroats.

sedge and reed warblers were also flying in and out of the reeds but were not as obliging as the whitethroat.  I walked back along the path towards my car and at the corner stopped to look for the tawny owl in this tree, but no luck.

South hide was my next stop, but there were very few birds on the water so I did not stay long.

I then drove towards the entrance to the reserve and parked my car. I went into the East hide from where I could see a single avocet, tufted duck, lapwing and black headed gulls.

Turret hide was my next stop from where the sound of black headed gulls can be deafening. Every bit of the islands are taken by gulls as nesting sites. Some of the gulls have chicks which are a yasty meal for the lesser black backed gulls, DONT LOOK AT THE NEXT PHOTOS IF YOU ARE A BIT SQEAMISH!!

The wind started to blow a bit stronger to I decided to leave the reserve and call in at another North on the way home. It was about 1pm when I reached North Duffield Carrs and met Alan Whitehead and Bud. We sat in the Geoff Smith hide for a while before Alan had to leave,

The young coot were now very mobile.

The mute swans are still sitting on eggs

as you can see from the photos the weather was still changeable, sunshine then showers. During one of the dry spells I walked down to the Garganey hide. Despite the heavy rain showers the water level is falling and the vegetation is growing which makes spotting birds a bit more difficult.

In the distance were 4 little egrets

along with two others feeding in the wet meadow these birds are becoming more common. How long before they start breeding here?

I counted 3 wigeon, lots of greylag geese, 60 mute swans, 1 black swan and the single whooper swan.

also on the bund was an Egyptian goose, my first of the year.

a march harrier disturbed the birds as it flew over

I walked back to the Geoff Smith hide where I sheltered from yet another rain shower.

I could just see the female deer and her young under some hawthorn bushes.

I left for home once it stopped raining.