{"id":925,"date":"2013-04-14T12:36:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T12:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=925"},"modified":"2013-04-14T14:36:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T14:36:15","slug":"early-april-at-denso-marston-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/early-april-at-denso-marston-reserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Early April at Denso Marston reserve"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been down to the river for a while and I also missed the walk and talk about the Hedgerow in Spring on Saturday morning (13th April). The next one is 4:00am for the Dawn Chorus. ANyway, on Saturday afternoon 6th April I went down to the river. On the way down the new tarmac path I spotted a ball of mossy fluff – a nest that was still being added to by a pair of Longtailed Tits.<\/p>\n

\"Long-tTailed<\/a><\/p>\n

I watched the birds disappear inside the nest with so that only the tip of their tail was sticking out but they were too fast to get a clear shot of.<\/p>\n

Just a few yards further on I spotted a lone Redwing.<\/p>\n

\"Redwing\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Along the river there were quite a few Robin singing, with Bluetits, Great-tits, Wrens, and an elusive Chiffchaff across the other side of the river.<\/p>\n

I watched a Treecreeper for a few minutes but it was not easy to keep track of it because of the number of lolloping dogs around. Their owners stopping to talk about what I was looking for was not an issue – however their dogs running around the undergrowth sticking their noses into everything soon scared things away.<\/p>\n

\"Treecreeper\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course we must not forget the other things that are using the nature reserve. I hope to gather photos of many of the things in the reserve. My flicker group for the photos of the reserve will hopefully keep growing.<\/p>\n

This is Lesser Celandine growing.<\/p>\n

\"Lesser<\/a><\/p>\n

And dwarf Daffodils that have probably been planted by someone.<\/p>\n

\"Dwarf<\/a><\/p>\n

At several places there seemed to be Wrens calling to indicate their territory. By listening you could almost draw lines to mark their areas.<\/p>\n

\"Wren\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The reserve is probably the first place I saw a Goldcrest and for a while now I have been hoping to get decent photos of this tiny bird. I finally managed it only a week or so back when one was happy to show itself in the garden. This one was also quite happy for me to get close to it. I have posted a few more shots on flicker if you want to see them.<\/p>\n

\"Goldcrest\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As in previous years I could hear rather loud Chiffchaffs across the other side of the river but on this day I managed to get sight of this one on my side of the river. It seemed to be putting out a very subdued call. It did not seem to be trying to draw attention to itself.<\/p>\n

\"Chiffchaff\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It is a shame about how much brightly coloured plastic there is trapped in the low tree branches but that stretch of the river is still beautiful.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

I had decided to head for home but in typical style something presented itself. As I walked past the path that leads up to the pond and the new admin block for the reserve I spotted a Heron perched on the handrail of the bridge. It flew off to the far corner of the pond where very quickly it had speared an enormous fish (enormous for such a small pond). It looks like a Pike to me. There are more photos of this on flickr.<\/p>\n

\"Heron<\/a><\/p>\n

It made a couple of attempts to get the fish the right way round for swallowing but it looked a bit big to me. It put the fish down and seemed to peck at it a few times but it was quite well hidden from me by then. It was also spooked a couple of times. Once it flew to the other end of the pound with the fish but then it flew past me without the fish.<\/p>\n

\"Heron<\/a><\/p>\n

I then had to head off for home – this is the last shot of it as I left.<\/p>\n

\"Heron<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been down to the river for a while and I also missed the walk and talk about the Hedgerow in Spring on Saturday morning (13th April). The next one is 4:00am for the Dawn Chorus. ANyway, on Saturday afternoon 6th April I went down to the river. On the way down the new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paul"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3kGoX-eV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","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=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":931,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marfell.me.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}