Stavely nature reserve, 18th June 2013

On the 18th of june 2013 I took a visit to Stavely nature reserve.

When we reached stavely we got out of the car and started walking through the wood to get to the lake, as we were walking through the wood a pair of blackbirds starting going mental and we knew tawnys were nesting in the wood so we thought thats what might have been setting them off so for about 20mins we searched for the tawnys but no sign. Anyway as we were looking for them i saw a blue tit fly past me and i saw it go in a hole in a tree so i walked over to see if it had a nest, we sat and watched for a while and the mother came back quite a few times to the nest with food so we then thought she must have chicks and just after she had left the nest we saw one of the chicks poke his head out of the hole! the chick looked quite big and looked about ready to fledge.

As we got to the lake reed buntings, reed warblers and sedge warblers were showing very nicely at the top of the reedbeds and swifts were gliding through the skys. We knew that at Stavely very recently that there was quite a few Otter sightings so we sat down on a bench for a while looking across the lake for them but they didnt turn up, as we were walking around the reserve we knew that Barn owls are nesting on the other side of the lake, so we looked for them and then we saw one leave the nest box and it flew over our heads! We watched the owl come back to the nest box severel times carrying voles and one time we even saw him catch one. Everytime the barn owl flew over the lake to get back to the nest box it was occasionally getting mobed by common terns, in the end it seemed he went all around the lake to get to his nest box so he could avoid getting mobed by the terns.

We decided to go further round the reserve to get to this other part of the lake, on the way there we found an active badger set and once again we saw the Barn owl fly over our heads, when we got down to the other lake we saw quite a lot of Pied wagtail fledgelings with there parents feeding them and on this lake there was a few nesting common terns on rafts in the water and we saw about 3 chiffchaffs around the area also we heard and saw a beautiful Song thrush.

When we were walking through the wood to get back to the car we once again heard the blackbirds going mental so once again i looked in the trees for the tawny and then i spotted a little fluffy tawny owl chick in the tree just above were the blackbirds were, it was great watching him.