Birding Group Visit To Pennington Flash
Our planned visit was supposed to be to Macclesfield Forest but the weather forecast was so poor that it made sense for us to swop that trip with the one for the following week – i.e. Pennington Flash. Pennington Flash has hides and is well provided with footpaths so it is much easier in poor weather than the Macclesfield Forest site which has none of these luxuries.
We started out at Hide 2 (The Horrocks Hide-the coldest and windiest) and immediately spotted two Little Ringed Plovers. There were lots of Coots on the water and several nests were visible, some with very young looking chicks. We went on to Hide 7 (Tom Edmondson Hide) where we tried for quite a while to locate a singing Reed Warbler. In the end it was in the nearest Willow shrub to us hiding around the back. We had a quick look at Hide 8 (The Ramsdale Hide) where we could see a couple of Great Crested Grebes but neither seemed to have chicks riding on their backs. There were several Coots around here as well.