Visit to North Cave Wetlands : 6th August 2013
Our visit to the Yorkshire coast involved a bit of a stay over in Hull so that we could have enough tome to fit in visits to the RSPB site at Blacktoft Sands and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust site North Cave Wetlands. This is a continuously developing site with a number of bodies of water and scrapes and fields on either side of a long lane that also has a few hides and some “blinds” along one side of the path. There is sometimes a mobile cafe but it had closed for the day and moved off the site by the time we got there. It seems that the lady who provides the service starts very early in the morning ! At the end of the path you can see the gravel and sand pits that are used for extraction and on one side is a spanking new hide that looks over about a 200 degree view of the surrounding bodies of water. This is quite impressive and very comfortable but we didn’t see a great deal from here except lots of Greylag Geese, Ravens and Great and Lesser Back-Backed and Black-headed Gulls. However when we visited other parts of the site, there were some good birds for us to discover.
First off we went back along the path to the left where there is a circular walk around a large lake. Here we immediately saw a Kingfisher perched on a post. Unfortunately it also saw us and didn’t hang around for too long. We did get it in the scope however. As we looked over this lake a pair of Common Terns started to fly around above us. As at all these sites, Swallows abounded. We walked to the next body of water and there we saw a Mute Swan and a pair of Black Swans. The Common Terns were in greater abundance here and there was also a Little Grebe and Great Crested Grebe and a solitary Tufted Duck and some Pochard. There were plenty of Lapwings and we also saw a pair of Cormorants.
I don’t think we really did this site justice because we were a bit tired after a long day traveling and being in the heat and we wanted to be able to get to Hull in plenty of time to get cleaned up and have a drink before dinner so we didn’t do all that we might have done. It is definitely a place worth coming back to though.
Bird Sightings : North Cave Wetlands
| Species | Count |
|---|---|
| Mute Swan | 1 |
| Black Swan | 2 |
| Greylag Goose | 40 |
| Pochard | 1 |
| Tufted Duck | 1 |
| Cormorant | 2 |
| Little Grebe | 1 |
| Great Crested Grebe | 1 |
| Kestrel | 1 |
| Lapwing | 40 |
| Black-headed Gull | 100 |
| Lesser Black-backed Gull | 30 |
| Great Black-backed Gull | 20 |
| Common Tern | 8 |
| Kingfisher | 1 |
| Rook | 30 |
Site Map
North Cave Site Map