Writing, musings and sightings from 'out in the field'.
Patch No. 2 is at the meeting of three rivers.
We are spoilt really. We have the estuaries of the River Parrett, the Huntspill River and the River Brue all meeting the Bristol Channel at Bridgewater Bay National Nature Reserve within a mile of each other. For an area so close to a major motorway and some sizeable towns, this is really quite an unexpected wild stretch of England’s coast.
Read MoreAll keen birdwatchers have a ‘Patch’. A patch of ground where one goes regularly to watch birds. A place to study the change in seasons and how the birdlife shares the habitat throughout the year.
We are lucky, we have two ‘Patches’ - one in the heart of the Somerset Levels, a classic mixture of blocks of reed beds, water and mixed woodland. The other is coastal, a wild strip of tidal margin and river estuaries. It is at the meeting of two rivers; the Brue and the Parrett, as they flow into Bridgewater Bay National Nature Reserve on the southern side of the Bristol Channel.
We know them as ‘The Patch’ and ‘The Brue’.
Read More
On a cold Saturday afternoon at the end of November Somerset Birdwatching Holidays were amongst a throng of over 200 people at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve in the heart of the Somerset Levels. It was a clear afternoon getting colder by the minute as the sun was setting just beyond the distinctive shape of Glastonbury Tor
Read MoreI love the way the seasons slowly blur into one another, so that one moment I’m watching swallows hawking for insects over our garden, and the next, as I cycle around the lanes behind my home, loose flocks of fieldfares and redwings burst out of the hawthorn hedgerows, signalling that autumn is well and truly here.
Read MoreI held a precious jewel this morning. It sat right in the palm of my hand, twinkling like a beautiful gemstone or an ornately decorated broch. However this jewel fell from a tree and bumped into my kitchen window with the softest of taps to then flop to the ground. At first I thought it a leaf until I noticed its beady wee black eye, needle sharp beak and flash of yellow across its crown. This miniscule bundle of olive feathers and grey fluff was a somewhat dazed Goldcrest.
Read More
