Somerset.... mainly Ham Wall RSPB

 So still catching up with stuff from June! We booked a week in Somerset in between visits to Birmingham. Ham Wall is one of our favourite reserves in the UK, mind you we do have lots of favourites 😂

Ham Wall:

Marsh Harrier

Dragonfly, not sure of species,

Growing up fast! A young Great Crested Grebe,

Great White Egret,

Broad-bodied Chaser,

Glastonbury Tor,

Dragonfly (species?),

At Westhay Moor, Great Crested Grebe, with chicks,

Dad bringing lunch home 

that was way too big! Eventually 'mom' had to eat it

Marsh Harrier back at Ham Wall,

Tufted Duck,

Little Grebe with two youngsters,

Merlin!

Black-tailed Skimmer (female),

Swans on one of the channels.

Black-tailed Skimmer (male),

Plenty of female Mallard, theres a few Gadwall in there too.

Grey Heron,

Mallard young at Chew Valley.

Gatekeeper Butterfly,

Common Blue Damselfly,

Broad-bodied Chaser,

Little Egret,

and a very distant blurred shot of a Bittern! We had quite a few Bittern sightings at Ham Wall but this is the only photo that is vaguely identifiable 😌

A Walk at Lochore Meadows

 With the snow disappearing we ventured out to our really local patch Lochore Meadows, the paths though were still very icy and dangerous in places, but we made it down to the hide, although there wasn't much about, but plenty of Teal, Mallard and a Gadwall (our first of the year);

We took a walk from there over the bridge and along the burn to a seat by the gate, for a sit and a coffee, we have seen Long-tailed Tit and Goldcrest here, but nothing showed today and the fields were empty too. We walked back down to the Loch and watched there for a little while and finished our coffee off. There was plenty of activity:

Little Grebe

Mute Swans

Male Goosander

Little Grebe

Mute Swans

Mute Swan

Mute Swan, touchdown!

Tufted Duck & Coot

The Goosander again

Tufted Duck and Coot Melee!

Tufted Ducks

Black-headed Gulls and a Coot

Tufted Duck

Female Goldeneye

Common Gull

a Distant Yellowhammer

Belvide Nature Reserve

We decided after some years thinking about it! To join the West Midlands Bird Club, this gives us access to a number of private reserves within a 45 minute drive from home. Once we received our membership details, that contains the codes to access the reserves we took the short hop over to Harborne to check the reserve there out.

The reserve is tiny and is adjacent to the Harborne Walkway, having said that it's a nice place for a shortish walk. There are no hides but quite a few benches which we made good use of for a coffee or two of course. Now that we are getting in to late June the bird activity is a lot less, so not much was seen, the highlight being a family of at least 4 Goldcrest dancing around in the tree canopy above our bench, so getting a photo was nigh on impossible. I do have a blurry one, but I won't put that on here.

The only other photo was of a patrolling Buzzard:

So now on to the title of this post, Belvide NR, this another WMBC reserve not far from J12 of the M6. This reserve is based around the Belvide Reservoir, there are 6 hides, plenty of benches and two toilets (luxury!) To cover all 6 hides the walk from the car park and back is about 3 miles, which on a hot afternoon like yesterday was a bit tiring for us oldies. Also it's always strange sussing out a new place, because you don't know where anything is, luckily at the second hide we visited we had a nice socially distanced chat with a regular he gave us a rough idea of what was where.

So onto the birding bit.
Tufted Duck, of which there were plenty,

 Peacock Butterfly Catepillar,

 Common Terns,

 'Dancing' Lapwing,

 Common Tern,

 Great Crested Grebe,

 Ringed Plover,

 Pochard,

 Carrion Crow,

 Tufties and Coot,

 Reed Bunting going for it,

 I think this is a Buff Ermine Moth Catepillar, but I'm no expert, so sorry if I'm wrong.

 Juvenile Coot,

 Damoiselle,

 Young Tree Sparrow,

 Young Great Tit,

 Tree Sparrow,

 Sedge Warbler

 Red Admiral,

 Long-tailed Tit

 and Pheasants.

We had a lovely 4 hours or so there, taking our year tally up by 3 to 120 and 72 for the month, so not too bad.