Which Way Is Canada?

In what now is fast becoming something that resembles scenes from Last Of The Summer Wine, I once again met up with Barman58 and WelshSi at Newport Wetlands, and we brought along our very own Compo this week in the shape of JerryWSL !
The plan was to show Jerry and Simon the Goldcliffe end of the Uskmouth reserve, as they have never been down to the "birding" end of the wetlands.

We had an hour or so wandering around the RSPB end of things first. It was howling a gale, so the reed birds were way to fast and flighty to get any chance of IDing my perennial hard to get tick of a Bearded Tit. There were some nice water birds on the lagoons, and I spotted quite a few Little Grebes around, which is great, because it is my Number One favourite water bird, and I love photographing it ... bodes well for the spring and a sitting in the warm sun!

These two Canadian Geese were by the pontoon bridge (or bouncy bridge as I call it) .. Simon threw himself into his fieldcraft training that he learnt last Sunday, and it was all we could do to stop him jumping into the lagoon to get water level shots .. we allowed him to lie on the pontoon, and just smile knowingly as passers by when they looked at him a bit odd! Stop Press!! Jerry just blipped Simon here!!!

I opted for the bending in half approach, hopefully Simon will blip his geese later and I will link it in tomorrow.

Goldcliffe was very quiet for birds. A couple of Pintail, a flock of Widgeon, a number of Shelducks, a flock of about 100 starlings, but what caught my eye was a dozen Curlews that came into land, I've never seen that many at once.

There is a lot of work going on down that end of the reserve, and two new hides are almost in place, both these look better for photographic and bird watching activities ... this bodes well for the rest of the year!

A cracking day, once again with cracking company!

My second blog for the RSPB went live yesterday if you want a look, click here.