St Aidan’s

 Just back from holiday so trying to catch up. If I can I will try to do a relatively local Blog in-dispersed with a holiday Blog. Anyway, at the end of last month my wife and I had a trip down to St Aidan’s just outside of Leeds. The birds were great and so was the weather although this time we unfortunately didn’t see Bittern (we did however hear a few) or Black-necked Grebe it was still a great day out though.

Loads of Sedge Warblers were singing in the reeds.

Reed Warbler.

Shoveler.

Common Tern with Little Ringed Plover.

Common Tern.

Gadwall.

Black-headed Gull with nesting material.

Great Crested Grebe displaying.

Graylag chick.

Blue-tailed Damselfly.

We stopped off at a pub on the way back home and this female Grey Wagtail was taking insects back to its young.

St Aidan’s part six

 The sixth and final part of our trip to RSPB St Aidan’s. My last Blog was Bitterns in flight however to be able to get into flight they naturally must take off.  Here is a full sequence of one of the Bitterns coming out of the reeds and taking off.

If you look very closely you can just make out the eye of a second Bittern below and to the left of the first.

At times it didn’t look elegant.

And it seemed to be crashing into the reeds a lot

But it did eventually make it out

And as Bob and Paul would say “and away”

St Aidan’s part five

 As I said in my previous Blog, we saw at least three Bittern while we were at St Aidan’s here are two of them in flight something I have never seen before.

The Black-headed Gull clearly didn’t like the Bittern sharing its air space.