Tuesday 26 October – Bleadon Levels Nature Reserve Leader: Jane Cumming

This new venue attracted 26 walkers despite the damp and overcast weather. When I arrived to find the car park full of birders I said “What are you all doing here? There won’t be any birds”, having seen very little during a scouting visit a couple of weeks earlier. How wrong I was! – we had 49 species. At first it was a little discouraging, if typical, to see nothing at all in the pool by the car park (and the second blind, visited later, overlooked reeds grown too tall to allow any view of the water). We picked up a distant flock of eight Lapwings in flight, then Mallards started flying about everywhere and at least 50 Teal and a couple of Shovelers sprang up from the out-of-bounds pools by the STW, at which point we noticed the two hunting Peregrines causing all the commotion. Popping up onto the bank of the River Axe we noted a couple of Little Egrets, a few dabbling ducks and some larks and pipits out on the levels. We strolled south west along the cycle path in a light SW wind and thin drizzle, watching flocks of Chaffinches and Starlings passing overhead with small parties of Skylarks. Many of the finches dropped in to feed in the hawthorn patches which were alive with birds. We stopped for a while to watch one of the most active areas where we picked out Robin, Dunnock, Meadow Pipit, Song Thrush, finches and at least one Chiffchaff. A few Redwings were flitting about in the bushes but were very hard to see; Chaffinches on the other hand arrived and left again in droves, a few Greenfinches and Goldfinches mixed in with them. We carried on along the cycle track to the bridge which crosses the River Axe at Brean Sluice. The sides of the bridge looked like a broken-down fence, but on closer inspection it proved to be a long and beautifully designed “driftwood style” bird blind with seating next to the larger gaps in the fence so that observers could look down the river to the gull roost without flushing everything. At least seven Snipe did get up and fly across the river to land next to a Grey Heron, but a hundred Redshanks didn’t leave their waterside roost until the tide fell far enough to expose their feeding grounds on the muddy banks. The big gull roost included eleven Lesser Black-backed Gulls, quite a lot for this end of the autumn, and also four-five Curlews. A Little Egret fed on one side of the bridge, a Cormorant and ten Moorhens on the other. There were 40 Wigeon on the river with a few Mallard and Teal. Scanning the levels produced a Kestrel and a couple of Reed Buntings. On the way back we encountered a large flock of Long-tailed Tits, a Stonechat pair, and heard several Cetti’s Warblers singing from deep cover. This is a there-and-back walk (no round route) of only two and a half miles but it made for a very pleasant morning’s birding. Note that the main gate and visitors’ car park are only open on weekdays. (Thanks to Jane for leading.) Jane Cumming