Stavely Nature Reserve!

Yesterday evening we decided to go to Stavely Nature Reserve.

When we arrived at Stavely, on one of the lines was a stunning swallow which allowed us to get good views of him. We walked down the path through the wood to get to the lake, in the wood once again the blackbirds started going mental so then we thought the Tawny was about but since he was so camouflaged we couldn't find him.

Swallow

 

When we got to the lake, on the path there was quite a few toadlets and froglets, we tried our best to not step on any. We sat on this bench which over looked the lake, in the middle of it was two rafts were two family's of nesting Common terns were on it, the chicks were having there first couple of flights around the lake.

As we were watching them I saw something come out of the reeds at the back, it was a Little egret, it flew out of the reeds and started flying around the lake and it was occasionally getting mobbed by a grey heron and some of the common terns, a little while after it flew back down into the reeds.

After that we decided to go to the other part of the reserve were there was another lake too, when we got there we scanned the scrapes for waders and after a couple of seconds I picked up a little ringed plover family at the back on the scrape, it was great to see the chicks looking really healthy. On this lake too there was lots more common terns flying around plus on the scrape there was quite a few lapwings. After that I decided to move over to a different part of the scrape were there was quite a few snipes there, I counted three in total, it was great watching these guys walk around the scrape picking up bits and pieces.

Two of the three Snipes feeding along the scrape

 

After about another twenty mins of watching these great little birds, something landed in the tree just next to us, it was a cracking male linnet, after when we had flew away, we heard the terns calling so we looked behind us and there behind us was one of the barn owls who was getting mobbed by the terns, It was great to watch him plus after a couple of mins he came back the other way with a vole!

Barn owl

After when he was out of sight we decided to wait a little longer to see if he came back but after a while of waiting he didn't, so we decided to watch a common tern family for a bit which was brilliant to see an adult with its juvenile flying around the lake.

Adult common tern with Juvenile

After an enjoyable evening we decided to go home.