{"id":8793,"date":"2023-05-05T19:12:41","date_gmt":"2023-05-05T19:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=8793"},"modified":"2023-05-07T19:26:34","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T19:26:34","slug":"ben-rhydding-gravel-pits-early-may-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/ben-rhydding-gravel-pits-early-may-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits Early May 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On this visit to Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits I loaded myself up with my camera gear and binoculars while wearing my light coat. The sky looked OK but I didn’t allow for the wind. I should have put the heavier coat on. It was a chilling wind coming from the North East. I was not able to spend long looking over the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rose Rust Fungus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Fungus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Swans<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Blue Tit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Robin on Teasel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Fledgling Robin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Chiffchaff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Willow Warbler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Treecreeper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Grey Heron & Little Egret<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Little Egret<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the first things I spotted after getting onto the reserve was orange on several rose plants. Each had only one orange patch and at first glance I thought it was just where the buds were going to grow but I looked closer on one of them and noticed that it was powdery looking orange covering a leaf joint. A photo allowed me to ID it as Rose Rust Fungus (Phragmidium mucronatum). I did try reading a bit about it. I could understand the words like “consists of” and “characterised by” and that “all species had…” and they were “lacking in…” but I had no idea what the other words meant so I wasn’t any wiser as to what it had or hadn’t got. The photo seemed a good match though, so hopefully I am somewhere near in ID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rose Rust Fungus was one of the first things after getting onto the reserve but when I got to the far end I looked over the cut where piped water flows down to the river and saw a fallen tree that had the largest fruiting fungus I have ever seen. I have yet to ID it. I would say that parts of it were more than 12 inches (30 cm) across. Massive. Could it be Dryad’s Saddle – Cerioporus squamosus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was nice to see a pair of Swans on the lagoon. Their symmetry makes a nice photo I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could hear Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Robins and managed to get photos of them, including a newly fledged Robin that still had a downy head, but the next bird I spotted was a Little Egret. Unfortunately it spotted me first and was already flying over towards the sheep field. But I had better luck on my return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One area of the reserve was quite noisy with several Treecreepers and after watching and listening for I while I realised that several young Treecreepers were being fed by adults. The young tended to be hidden from my view by leaves but I did manage to get a shot of one of the adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When heading back I was lucky to spot the white of a Little Egret before it spotted me and carefully and slowly walked along the path until I could get a photo of it standing behind a Grey Heron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this visit to Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits I loaded myself up with my camera gear and binoculars while wearing my light coat. The sky looked OK but I didn’t allow for the wind. I should have put the heavier coat on. It was a chilling wind coming from the North East. I was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"I had a chilling but enjoyable walk around Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits on Thursday.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[159,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ben-rhydding-gravel-pits","category-paul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/R7_C2248.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3kGoX-2hP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8808,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8793\/revisions\/8808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}