The weather was not as pleasant as it may look in the above photo, I took this about 12 noon, in between rain showers.
The white dots in the photo are mute swans, 5 goldeneye at the far end of the water, teal and mallards sheltering from the wind in the vegetation at the waters edge. The highland cattle were on the right of the water, but no sign of any egrets, a very quiet day.
Then another shower of rain and several sand martins were flying low over the water. Year tick 120.
A helicopter then flew over, and several birds emerged from the vegetation on my right.
A pair of shelduck and several wigeon. A spoonbill flew in to feed.
It fished for food for about 10 minutes before flying back to the nesting area. A pair of cattle egrets then flew towards me, and one landed near the cattle. A little egret also flew in and started to fish. Steve arrived and we had a chat for a while before I walked back towards the car park.
This grey heron was standing at the edge of the stream,just left of the footpath.
I had intended to drive home, however I had parked my car near the bird feeders and decided to stay a while to see which birds were visiting them. When i first arrived at the car park, Andrew the warden from St.Aidans was looking at the feeders to see if he could find any willow tits, sadly he could not.
There were lots of great tits, a single blue tit, 2 goldfinches, 2 dunnocks, several chaffinches and a robin around the feeders.
A male red bunting was a frequent visitor, then a treecreeper appeared.
Not a brilliant photo as it was taken through my car windscreen.
A party of long-tailed tits arrived
Then a great-spotted woodpecker
Two birds that I was unable to take pictures of were a jay and my first willow tit of the year.
A pleasant if somewhat chilly 3 hours.