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.

Back to Upton Warren

So as promised in an earlier post we went back to Upton, although it took us longer than expected with weather, decorating and a few other things getting in the way.

Our main objective was to see the Redshank chicks at the Flashes and the mission was accomplished with one in particular being quite bold and showing well,

the other two were much more skittish and only showed briefly as did the parents.

The two reported Egyptian Geese at the Sailing Pool were also quite accommodating,

It was nice to see the Avocets doing so well, with the youngsters really growing fast and now totally independent, although we didn't count them there are a reported 25 juveniles almost ready to depart.

The Black-headed Gulls had become a bit quieter than our last visit 4 weeks ago, like the Avocets, the chicks are looking very grown up now, although as with the Avocets there are still a few really young chicks about. The majority though were taking a well earned rest,

Elsewhere at the Flashes there were plenty of Lapwing, Canada Geese, 3 Greenshank, a few Common Sandpiper and a pair of Little Ringed Plover brooding I think 4 eggs, but wasn't sure, only had a quick look whilst the parents did a change over. I was surprised to see a Moorhen with whatt must be a second brood though:

We decided to pop over to the Moors Pools to finish off the afternoon in the vain hope of Otters or Kingfisher, as usual neither showed for us this time out. Tina did catch a glimpse of a Water Rail, which I missed taking some poor photos of a Little Grebe family, I just couldn't get the light right with the shine on the water,

to make up up for it we did get some great views of both Reed and Sedge Warbler, normally they don't hang around long enough to either to get a proper look or even a photograph, you normally just see them flit in the reeds or zoom around a disappear down into the reeds as soon as they land.
So here are a few pics, I wish they had been closer but then a photographer is never satisfied!
Reed Warbler:

Sedge Warbler:

We had the pleasure of a Tufted Duck creche sail by, a single adult female with circa 30 chicks in tow, I was surprised that the Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls nearby ignored them, especially with a few of the chicks wandering off from the main group, they would have made a nice snack for a Gull.
A few of the 30.

With chicks to feed the Common Terns were busy fishing and occasionally came close enough for us to have a better look,

There was plenty of other bird activity and sometimes it's nice to give the more common birds a spotlight:
A shy Great Tit,

 Dunnock,

 Herring Gull,

 Blue Tit,

 Cygnets,

 Reed Bunting,

 and Bullfinch

So a lovely peaceful afternoon at the Warren, there weren't many other birders about, that can be really nice sometimes, just to sit and enjoy with no other distractions. We stayed about three and a half hours and totalled 42 species, not a huge number but really enjoyable.

A 'Tern' up for the books at Upton

On Sunday we took our good friends Keith & Liz to Upton for the afternoon, primarily to see the Avocets and their broods. I did look at the Birds Forum on the morning to see if anything else was happening and saw that a Black Tern had been seen at the Sailing Pool about 8:30 in the morning, I didn't hold up any hope of seeing it as we weren't planning to get there until 2ish, but to my and our surprise it was still there zooming around the pool picking up what it could. I tried some photos but trying to focus as it flew around was nigh on impossible, I did get a record shot though:

So a lifer for us and on our favourite reserve, bonus!

We carried on to the hide overlooking the flashes, where of course plenty was going on:
Lapwing with 3 chicks (the 3rd is just under the adult..)

 Little Ringed Plover

 Avocet

 Avocet young

 Lapwing chick

 Shelduck and ducklings

We then went over to the Moors Pools, again admiring the Black Tern, who was still cavorting around the Sailing Lake.
Mute Swan on approach!

Juvenile Long-tailed Tit

Vociferous Reed Bunting

Canada Goose

Sedge Warbler

Greenfinch

TTFN!