Easter Weekend…Part 1 - WeBS

This weekend started with a trip over to Nottingham to do my WeBS counts (yes I know, slightly belatedly). It was that nice a morning, I didn’t even need to wear a woolly hat! I arrived at Martin’s Pond in Wollaton slightly ahead of my friend and fellow WeBS counter, Mike, so I headed onto the site to wait for him and to play with my camera. I was duly greeted by a pair of swans who waddled over and proceeded to try to eat my jacket! They soon realised it wasn’t very tasty and went in search of something a little more nutritious.

Tufted duck at Martin's Pond

Pochard at Martin's Pond

As Mike and I wandered round counting the water birds, the birds in the trees above us were singing their little hearts out. Here’s hoping they know something the weather forecasters don’t and that spring really is on the way. The walk through Harrison’s Plantation to Raleigh Pond took slightly longer than usual as we were distracted by siskin, nuthatch and coal tit (amongst others). It was nice to see a few shoveler on Raleigh Pond too – not a usual suspect there!

Siskin in Harrison's Plantation

Fluffed up siskin - maybe the birds still
think it is pretty cold!

On to Wollaton Park… Now, I know that Attenborough likes to play host to all sorts of not exactly native species, but Wollaton Park was joining in the fun on Friday with a pair of Egyptian geese to go with the red-crested pochards and the ubiquitous Canada geese. They really are funny looking things! The lake had an unusually high number of swans on there too, but sadly, none of them were anything other than mutes. The recently formed heronry is up and running again this year with four birds sitting on nests (and a number of other seemingly empty nests in close proximity). One of the many Canada geese kindly showed off its colour ring to me, which was nice of it, and it appeared to be a bird I had not seen there before (at least I didn’t recognise the ring number, although I may yet be reminded that I have indeed seen it previously!).

On the way back around the lake we were treated to a very close view of a treecreeper, one of my favourite little birds! All in all, a very nice morning. Good to catch up with Mike, see some sunshine and have decent numbers of birds to count.