The first birding group day out after our holiday in Norfolk was to WWT Martin Mere. We changed our usual routine and decided to do the reedbed walk for the first time (at least my first time) This involves heading out to the Harrier Hide first and then going through the door in the middle of the ground floor.
From there you take a left and follow the path all the way round the reed beds until you end up at the side of the United Utilities Hide. The whole trip took a couple of hours but was only 1.7 miles. A fine day meant we spent a lot of time just looking and listening. We heard a Cuckoo pretty much as soon as we started but, despite scanning the trees, we could not find it.
We could hear plenty of Reed and Sedge Warblers but it was hard to see them and we only got a tiny fraction of those we heard. Whitethroat also seemed less common that we might have expected.
A lot of the route was just the reedbeds but when we came round to the far end we started to get different angles on the scrapes and pools you usually see from the United Utilities Hide. We got Ringed Plover and lots of Black-tailed Godwits and a few lingering Pink-footed Geese.
At the United Utilities Hide we got four Greenshank – unbelievably a UK year tick for me and a couple of Little Ringed Plovers. A couple of guys in the hide were talking about a Temminck’s stint they had seen on the Mere so we headed right down there. I stopped to ask Andy Bunting (we had seen him at Holmes Dunes a few days before) whether he knew anything about it and he said it had been chased off by a Ringed Plover and had not been seen for a while.
As this was such a good bird, we probably spent too long hoping it would reappear but it didn’t while we were there.
Next we went up to all the other hides. What was remarkable was how few birds there are at Martin Mere once the Whooper Swans, Pink-footed Geese, Teal and Wigeon have all, or mostly all, left. There weren’t even any Ruff so I suppose you could say it was a bit of a quiet day. However we had good weather, a nice walk and still got forty-seven species and a year tick so it wasn’t that bad.
Bird Sightings WWT Martin Mere 14th May 2019
| Pink-footed Goose | 3 |
| Greylag Goose | 20 |
| Canada Goose | 10 |
| Common Shelduck | 30 |
| Northern Shoveler | 10 |
| Common Pochard | 1 |
| Common Pheasant | 2 |
| Great Crested Grebe | 1 |
| Great Cormorant | 10 |
| Grey Heron | 1 |
| Little Egret | 1 |
| Common Buzzard | 2 |
| Common Moorhen | 4 |
| Common Coot | 4 |
| Pied Avocet | 40 |
| Eurasian Oystercatcher | 4 |
| Northern Lapwing | 20 |
| Common Ringed Plover | 1 |
| Little Ringed Plover | 2 |
| Common Greenshank | 4 |
| Common Redshank | 3 |
| Black-tailed Godwit | 100 |
| Black-headed Gull | 200 |
| Common Tern | 5 |
| Rock Dove | 4 |
| Stock Dove | 1 |
| Common Wood Pigeon | 4 |
| Eurasian Collared Dove | 2 |
| Common Cuckoo | 1 |
| Common Swift | 8 |
| Eurasian Jackdaw | 6 |
| Barn Swallow | 6 |
| Cetti’s Warbler | 2 |
| Willow Warbler | 1 |
| Common Chiffchaff | 3 |
| Sedge Warbler | 8 |
| Eurasian Reed Warbler | 2 |
| Common Whitethroat | 1 |
| European Robin | 3 |
| Eurasian Blackbird | 2 |
| Mistle Thrush | 2 |
| Dunnock | |
| Pied Wagtail | 1 |
| Reed Bunting | 1 |
| Common Chaffinch | 2 |
| European Greenfinch | 2 |
| Eurasian Tree Sparrow | 8 |
Year Tick Greenshank