Tophill Low

 A visit to Tophill Low has been in my diary for a while and at last I managed it today.A warning to would be visitors. The normal route to the south end of the reserve is closed so a diversion has been set up. I clocked up 6 miles visiting every hide today.

There is a one way system to follow and so my first stop was at the centre to have a look at the sightings board. From the lookout section I could see lots of birds on the reservoir.

The sunlight was good and I could see the white feathers on shovelers, tufted ducks, goldeneye and great crested grebes. Mallard, pochard and gadwall were also present.

red crested pochard was one of the birds that I hoped to see. They did not come very close to the hide.

Bird number 185 on my year list.

I left the hide and continued to walk along the path. Plenty of small bird activity in the trees, but I found it difficult to locate the birds. Blue, great and long tailed tits and robins. From the hide at the top end of the reservoir there were no birds to be seen, I was surprised to see these

 

The only other place that I have seen goats is on the Great Orme. Cattle were also grazing

a grey squirrel was in a nearby tree.

I then walked back to the centre to check if any new birds had been seen and as nothing new had been reported I walked down to the hides near O reservoir. As I mentioned before there is a diversion to avoid the work taking place. So instead of walking clockwise around one section of the reservoir you have to walk anti clockwise, which is a lot further.

From the first hide there were few birds to be seen, The second hide was better

lots of teal, a few mute swans, a little egret and a redshank.

I could hear lots of geese and when I reached the hide at the bottom end of the reserve I could see lots of geese and ducks.

Most of the geese were greylags with a few canada geese and 3 pink feet.

I also had a brief sighting of a kingfisher, another bird that I had hoped to see, bird number 186 on my year list. It was now 1330 and I had to be back home for 4pm so I walked back to the car park. On the way back I met Richard and we had a brief chat. I got back to my car a bit quicker than I had expected so went back into the centre and looked out over the reservoir again. A party of 14 whoopers were on the left hand part of the reservoir.

the red crested pochard was near them.

A pleasant day and two ticks for my year list. Every other Wednesday I go to Scarborough, but not tomorrow, which is probably as well looking at the weather forecast. Perhaps another visit to Old Moor to try to find jack snipe.