We did a flying visit to England to touch base with the family. The kids were at school so we were able to do a couple of visits to local beauty spots. First we did Leighton Moss RSPB , then Pennington Flash. We also had a family visit to Castlefield Viaduct in the centre of Manchester.
Leighton Moss RSPB reserve is split into two parts. The main reserve is a series of ponds, lakes and reedbeds.
We managed to dip out on the bitterns. One flew into the little island in the second photo as we arrived in the hide. It flew out 15 minutes later as I was checking my phone!! We did however see a wide variety of birds including osprey, reed warbler, cettis warbler and several views of marsh harrier including one lifting a coot chick. The second part of the reserve is about a mile away and is an inlet of Morecambe Bay and tidal. It has a breeding black-headed gull colony (which had been hit by avian flu but remained open?), black-tailed godwits, greenshank, avocets, 9 little egrets and a poorly Mediterranean gull.
Pennington Flash was very quiet but did add stock dove to the list while Castlefield Viaduct offered feral pigeons and a magpie. Its claim to fame is not birds but the transformation of a redundant Victorian railway viaduct into a garden in the sky. Half of it has been transformed with planting and half remains as it was. If you happen to be in Manchester city centre it is worth a visit.
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| This is how it started |
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| Pleasant walk in the city |
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| Hopefully trees will take over |
The next post involves the passports and although it starts in Eire it does go elsewhere. One snag was the failure of the SD card on the penultimate day of the holiday and the loss of all the good bird photos with the decent camera and the 200mm lens. If you have any ideas as to how to extract images from a corrupted SD card please let me know. I am hopeful I can get some of them back.
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