Visit to Budworth Mere 29th January 2013

Visit to Budworth Mere 29th January 2013

After the birding group finished up at Neumann’s Flash, Mike and I thought we had enough time to go over to Budworth Mere to see whether that had thawed out since I had been there a few days before. It had almost completely thawed out so there was plenty of open water at the reed bed hide where we spent some time watching two Cormorants fighting over a huge fish that one of them had caught. The struggle to secure the fish was entertaining enough but it was quite a sight to watch the Cormorant try to get it to go down and stay down. We must have watched it for fifteen minutes after it had swallowed the fish and it still seemed to be struggling to keep it down when it eventually disappeared into the distance. We had been told that a Bittern had been seen from the hide ninety minutes before but we had no luck. We had better luck with Kingfishers as I caught a good sighting of one Kingfisher chase another up the mere, turn around at the hide end and zoom back down into the foliage at the other side of the mere.

There were lots of Great Crested Grebes and we also spent some time watching a pair of them bow and head-shake to each other in their familiar ritual. At the feeder hide we saw a couple of Nuthatches but otherwise it was just the usual suspects. We walked back along the side of the mere and we saw the large flock of Coots who seem to spend all their time grazing on the field on the opposite side of the mere and a Buzzard burst out of the woods close to us and rose into the sky looking huge. We spent a bit more time at the reed bed hide looking for the Bittern but still no joy. I don’t know if we are just imagining the first tentative signs of spring approaching !

Bird Sightings : Budworth Mere