Birthday Day Out to WWT Martin Mere 17th January 2013
As a treat for my birthday, Anne, Mike and I drove up to WWT Martin Mere. This was partly so I could order my new Swarovski ATX scope so I spent half an hour sorting that out with Bernie from the In Focus shop before joining the others at the Raines Hide. Here there were very nice views of one of my favourite water birds – Pintail. There were also Sheldcuk and Wigeon, Moorhen and Coot. We spent a bit of time in this hide but I had heard that the Green winged Teal had been sighted from the Ron Barker Hide so we headed off up there first. In short, it wasn’t to be seen there and there was, in fact, very little there. It just seems it was far too cold and with lots of the bodies of water completely frozen, most of the birds had gone elsewhere We did get a view of a Kestrel and a Buzzard and as we walked back down from Ron Barker we spotted a few Redwing amongst the many Brackbirds on the grass of the car park overflow.