Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall 21st August 2016

Shapwick Heath and Ham Wall 21st August 2016

We left WWT Slimbridge in the early afternoon and then we drove down towards Montacute but first stopping off at Shapwich Heath and Ham Wall nature reserves. I had seen on the bird alert sites that Glossy Ibis and Osprey had been around and we tried our luck at these. The weather had picked up a bit and it was now quite warm and sunny. A great surprise was the new facilities there.

Since our last visit the RSPB have established a small visitor centre and built a pretty big car park which was really needed as the Ham Wall Site shared a small car park with the Shapwick Heath site. Needless to say this meant a lot of parking on the roads and difficulty every time a rare bird was spotted – a quite frequent occurance at these two sites. Even better, perhaps, is the new toilets; there had never previously been facilites there and you had to go to the nearby pub which wasn’t always open and has the worst loos (outdoor) in the world anyway.

After a bit of a chat with the volunteer we decided to head off looking for the Glossy Ibises. As it happens we did not see them but we got a lovely Great White Egret. There is a new hide overlooking Meare Heath where there is usually a large body of water and where one often sees the Egrets and a very large number of Gadwall which proved to be interesting, though I imagine it will be pretty full a lot of the time.

We moved on to Noah’s Hide where we found our Osprey. It seems that it had already eaten so it was largely just sitting on the bare branches of a tree stump that rose out of the water. We watched it for a very long time and I eventually managed to get some nice digiscoped video of it but from outside the hide – the hide floor shakes too much for tripod mounted video.

The afternoon was wearing on and we had just the briefest of looks at the Ham Wall end of the reserves before we had to get to our friends in time for a clean up before dinner.

Bird Sightings : Shapwick Heath

Bird Sightings : Somerset