Travelling again – 9. RSPB Loch Leven

Tags

coot, dabchick, Grant Arms Hotel, greylag goose, lapwing, little grebe, Loch Leven, Queensferry Bridge, Steve Richards, tufted duck, viper's bugloss

It was with a distinct pang of regret that I left the Grant Arms Hotel after breakfast on Wednesday, 16th June. As during my previous stay in June 2019, I had felt so well looked after. For anyone who would like a holiday in the Cairngorms – not just for wildlife purposes – I cannot recommend it highly enough.

But it was time to make my way southwards. Indeed, I needed to descend (map-wise that is) through Scotland rather more speedily than I had travelled on my way ‘up’, as I wanted to spend a couple of hours at RSPB Loch Leven, given that it was so near to Kinross Services. So I took the faster A9 road, and stopped for no photos, much as I would have liked to. As the previous week, I plugged Steve Richards’s latest podcast into my ears, having downloaded it at the hotel, and was pleased to find that he had taken, not for the first time, one of my comments or questions to respond to. Moreover, he had mentioned my journey northwards. (And the following week he did the same again, this time referring to my journey southwards. He enjoys including personal references to his listeners who contact him.)

After stocking up on fuel and food provisions at Kinross Services, I made my way to Loch Leven, and spent a couple of hours there, in three hides, each quite close to the others. As I moved to, between, and from the hides, I enjoyed looking at the the wildflower meadows as much as I did at the birds.

Mainly greylag geese

Viper’s bugloss

Way in the distance I spotted one of my favourite birds, a lapwing, aka peewit from its call.

And then I noticed one ferreting around much closer to the hide.

It stayed quite a while. I moved to the next hide. As with the others, I had it to myself.

Two adult and two coot chicks

Mainly tufted ducks

Little grebe, aka dabchick

Dabchick with ?fish

There were several artificial ‘islands’ where birds could nest safely.

I took a final picture as I made my way back to my car afters two hours. I needed to move on.

Another enjoyable crossing via the Queensferry Bridge, though in rather faster moving traffic this time, and then I disobeyed my satnav’s instruction to avoid Edinburgh by using on the motorways surrounding the city to the south, and went instead across the top, parallel to the Forth, though sadly not actually seeing much of it. I had only visited Edinburgh once before, on a management course some 50 years previous (!) and I was pleased to see a little of it as I drove through in the very slow, sometimes stationary, traffic.

It was a lovely, but by now tiring, drive further along the Forth/North Sea coastline to Berwick-on-Tweed, where I was very happy to flop for the rest of the evening in my pre-booked B’n’B. It always amuses me when places give you a key to the front door, ‘for if you come in after 11 o’clock’. I wasn’t going anywhere after such a long day!

Greylake Nature Reserve

Tags

coot, fieldfare, gadwall, greta white egret, Greylake, Ham Wall, hare, lapwing, mink, otter, redwing, RSPB, shoveler, snipe, Somerset Wildlife Trust, sparrowhawk, stonechat, swan, teal, wetlands, wigeon

Greylake Nature Reserve, owned by the RSPB.  I’d visited it just once before, and that only briefly. The prospect of a guided tour with birding experts, set up by the Somerset Wildlife Trust, and led by an RSPB volunteer, was too good to miss, so this was my third outdoor outing this week in near freezing temperatures.The briefing told us that the land had been in cultivation until 2003, when it was bought by the RSPB and converted into wetland for wildlife.  We would make our way to the main hide, where we would spend about half our time, and then walk around those parts accessible to the public.  Most of the area was kept behind electric fencing for the tranquillity of the birds and animals.  It was good to come at all times of the year, but this season was the best time because of the thousands of different birds over-wintering there.

On the way to the hide, I managed to get an indifferent picture of a fieldfare.

Once at the hide, we had this general view ahead of us.Looking round, and closing in a little with binoculars and camera, here are other aspects.

Wigeon, shovelers and coot

Wigeon, shoveler, coot and gadwall

Experienced birders were soon exclaiming at this clump, just 20 metres or so from us.A pair of teal can be seen easily, especially the male.  But are there really snipe there? And four?In due course I managed to find three, and indeed once you knew that they were there, it was even possible to pick the nearest one out with the naked eye, they were so close.  But what wonderful camouflage!  They didn’t move the whole of the time we were there.

 

It was not possible to get photos of all the species we saw, but here are some. (If birder readers wish to comment with further names, or corrections to any of these photos, above and below, please feel free!)

Shovelers, the male’s bill demonstrating just why they bear that name. The female has the same bill, but that is hidden here.

 

I just love lapwings, (also known as peewits) for their green iridescence, their cheeky crest, their wonderful courtship flight, their flappy way of flying (I call them flapwings).  This one all alone entertained us close to the hide for ages.

And as at Ham Wall, there was a Great white egret in the distance.

 

Three in fact. and here is one of the others flying around

 

Not long after leaving the hide, and keeping to the established path, we were shown by one of the RSPB volunteers, to the right of the path, some otter poo and some mink poo, the former more welcome than the latter.  The otter spraint was on a well-established otter path.To the left, the other part of the otter path could be seen.We were pleased then to see crowds and crowds of lapwing flying around, as if there had been a signal to the thousands in the area all to rise up at once. Here are just a few of them.Swans have no need to fear humans, and they know it. This one made for an easy photo, just a very few metres away from where we were walking.A distant view of another great white egret.Evidence of a recent hare boxing match.And of a sparrowhawk kill.We hoped to see more small birds, and indeed we did see redwing, and stonechat, but I couldn’t get photos.  We went on to a viewpoint:But few wetland birds were favouring this area of the reserve. Perhaps, along with the small birds, they were favouring the more sheltered areas on this chilly day.  But I, usually spending far too much of my life in front of a computer, had really enjoyed my three outdoors outings this week.  I must do it more often, and certainly return to Greylake at other seasons.

Starlings at Ham Wall

Tags

Ashcott, Avalon Marshes, Canada goose, coot, Glastonbury Tor, Great white egret, Ham Wall, mallard, murmuration, pochard, rhyne, RSPB, Shapwick Heath, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Stephen Moss, swan

I hadn’t been to see the local starling murmuration this winter, so yesterday mid-afternoon I decided to rectify that.  It’s always chancy, and for a good display the ideal weather is clear skies. Yesterday there was mainly thin cloud, but I knew that the birds would soon be migrating back to their north European breeding grounds, and I might not have many more chances.  The Avalon Marshes starling hotline informed me that the previous night the starlings had roosted at both Ham Wall and Shapwick Heath, each accessible from the same RSPB car park at Ashcott, (recently created, to the great relief of those using the nearby country road from which the reserves are accessible.)

Once there, I decided, I’m not sure why, to go east along the rhyne (pronounced ‘reen’) or drainage ditch, making for Ham Wall, rather than westwards to Shapwick Heath.    I made my way slowly to the main viewing platform, 400 metres down the path, enjoying what other birds were to be seen on the reserve, as night started to fall.

Glastonbury Tor in the distance

The water levels are carefully managed with sluices

En route I observed Stephen Moss, naturalist, author and TV producer, and President of the Somerset Wildlife Trust, with a small group of people, and I reckoned I must have made the right decision as to direction.  Once I was at the platform, the Avalon Marshes representative advised going on another 600 metres, as a thousand starlings had already  made their way in that direction.  “There’s another half million due, and earlier on in the season there were a million here, but they’ve started leaving.  We have had as many as five million in years gone by.”

On maximum zoom, in the far distance from the viewing platform, a great white egret, a species that has just begun to breed in the UK.

I walked on the extra distance, taking more photos.

When I’d gone the 600 metres, I was not alone – this was about a third of the people gathered there.

I moved slightly away and lower, to the bank of the rhyne, where there were fewer people. It wasn’t long before I became aware of birds streaming way up high over my left shoulder.  They were all making their over to the north and doing a bit of their murmuring there, but at a low level and not very photographable.  But I got a few pictures over the next 20 minutes or so.

Then they were gone, into the reeds, for the night.  The moon was up, behind the cloud,

and it was time to wander back to the car park, along the rhyne.

Tardy small groups of starlings continued to fly over my head for a little while to join their roosting companions. How do they know where to go? What more pleasant way to spend a late afternoon? Why don’t I visit one of the UK’s most famous nature reserves, just 20 minutes from where I live, more often?

I’ve just rung the starling hotline again.  Yesterday the starlings only roosted at Ham Wall.  Good call.

An orgy of exhibitions, concluded

Tags

Ardizzone, Bacchus, Camley Park, Cézanne, coot, Courtauld Gallery, Daumier, Granary Square, House of Illustration, Imperial War Museum, Kings Cross Development, Oradour-sur-Glane, Pissarro, Rodin, Somerset House, St Mary le Strand, St Pancras Station, World War 2

Ardizzone and Rodin.  Neither of us had before heard of the English illustrator, Edward Ardizzone (1900-1979).  But when I had read of the exhibition at the House of Illustration devoted to his work, I realised that I, like probably everyone else of my age who had read storybooks as a child, must have seen so many of his pictures.  And how familiar his style turned out to be!  And how delightful!  However, Ardizzone was also an official war artist in WW2, and in due course worked for the magazine ‘Punch’ .

But I’m getting ahead. The House of Illustration is on Granary Square, part of the Kings Cross development  project, and has been open there for a couple of years.  Mary and I stopped for coffee first at the café of a well-known supermarket housed in a very attractively converted old industrial building.

“A cappuccino and a flat white please.”

“We don’t do a flat white. Would you like a coffee?”

Well, that was a first!

Photography was not allowed, and they had run out of postcards.  I have picked these images up from internet sources (and will of course remove any subjected to protest that they are copyrighted.)

Illustrations for children.

Illustrations for adults

Many of his enticing book covers, for both adults and children, were exhibited.

War pictures

But this next really got to me.  (It is owned by the Imperial War Museum and is definitely in the public domain.)  It is called ‘A Drunken Dutchman in a Street in Bremen’.  So much more poignant than any photo.  And it reminded me of my visit to Oradour-sur-Glane a few years ago, that town sacked by the Nazis in 1944 as they retreated from western France, killing almost every single inhabitant, man, woman and child, many of them after they had been been herded into the church which was then set on fire.  The town was left as it was in 1945 as a memorial and is now a tourist ‘attraction’.

Outside once more, we walked around the Kings Cross development, not yet finished.  To my delight I found that it abutted, over the Grand Union Canal, the Camley Park nature reserve, which I have yet to visit.

St Pancras Station in silhouette

This coot was almost literally under our feet, on the ‘wrong’ side of the canal.

A short bus ride took us round to the sunny side of St Pancras Station, where we changed routes.

We were heading for the Courtauld gallery, housed in Somerset House, which has a very varied history.

Our view at lunch, taken in their café, would have been more interesting a few days either earlier or later.  Today they were clearing away the ice skating rink which had been there from mid-November to the middle of this month.

St Mary le Strand peeping over to the right

 

Making our way back to the Courtauld Gallery entrance, we heeded Bacchus’s warning.

Photography in the Rodin and Dance exhibition was not allowed, so here are scans of a couple of the more publishable exhibits.  Most of the others were studies (for sculptures) much too explicit for a nice girl like me to share. Rodin himself shared them with only a few friends.

 

The exhibition was small and quickly viewed, so we completed our visit to the Gallery by looking at some of the many other wonderful, well-known, exhibits. These are my photos.

Cézanne, The Lake at Annecy

Cézanne, The Card Players, one of Mary’s favourites

Pissarro, Lordship Lane, Dulwich

Rubens, Landscape by Moonlight

 

I had only visited the Courtauld Gallery once before, decades ago when I lived in London.  I had fallen for and bought a postcard of this picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Daumier. I still have it, very dog-eared from years of use as a bookmark.  So I treated myself to a new one:

Many, many thanks to Mary for her company and hospitality over this couple of days.

Shapwick Heath

Tags

Avalon Marshes, Burns the Bread, coot, dendrochronology, heron, Natural England, RSPB, Shapwick Heath, Somerset Levels, Somerset Wildlife Trust, swan, Sweet Track

A few days ago, when the weather wasn’t as bitterly cold as it is now, a London friend came to visit me, and among other things we had a lovely walk on Shapwick Heath, part of the Avalon Marshes, also known as the Somerset Levels. The whole area has been restored for wildlife after a century and more of being worked for peat.  Natural England, the RSPB, and the Somerset Wildlife Trust each manages part of the Marshes.  The visitor is rarely aware of who owns and manages what, and the bodies work together as part of the Avalon Marshes Partnership.

Another feature of the place is the existence of the Sweet Track,  built by people living in the area in 3807 BC or 3806 BC.  How so precisely dated?  By the science of dendrochronology, reading the tree rings of this wood beautifully preserved by the acidic bogs.

We walked for about two miles each way along the River Brue, straightened and canalised as part of the draining of the Levels centuries ago.  To our left was the river, to the right marshland.

Coot

We walked as far as, and examined as best we could, a new hide being built,

opposite this view beyond the Brue

before turning back and along a track

to an old one, called Noah’s Hide.  We stayed there for quite a while, enjoying big landscape views and smaller more intimate sights, bordering on voyeurism once or twice.

We were disappointed that no pair was formed from the three Great crested grebes we saw.  Their courtship dance is wonderful to see, as they bow and weave in perfect mirrored harmony on the water.

When it was time to return to the car and home, we congratulated ourselves on the weather which had certainly been better than forecast, and felt that the exercise we had done amply justified eating the Eccles cakes we had bought from Burns the Bread earlier on in the day.