Fairburn Fungus

We spotted quite an array of fungus at Fairburn at the weekend. I have to say this first one is the prettiest i've ever seen - if you can call them pretty!

Here are a some of the others we saw. The little one had quite a lot of fun trying to spot them before us.

Fairburn Ings

An afternoon at Fairburn yesterday proved to be quite a rewarding day bird wise and the little one enjoyed herself too, which is always good. The RSPB website now have a woodland bingo game that can be printed off for the reserve, which was a good way of making it more interesting, she was ticking things off pretty quick and used the back of it to draw birds on in the hide!

We walked down to the Lin Dyke hide first seeing Long Tailed Tits on the way. From the hide we saw Wigeon, Teal, my first ever Shovelers, Cormorants, Lapwing, a lone Mallard and a herd of the cattle that roam the fields there.

Lapwing
Onto the reserve by the visitor centre where we saw our first Tree Sparrows of the day. From the Pick up hide there was a lot of activity round the feeders from Goldfinch, Pheasants, Chaffinch, Great and Blue Tits. On the water we could see Moorhens, Mallards and overhead Kestrels.

The feeding station had all the usual birds plus Greenfinch with Mallards and a Moorhen picking up the dropped seed.

We ended up walking the entire lake and back along the road to the visitor centre. From the cut hide we saw Pochard, Great Crested Grebe, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Lapwings, Shovelers, Wren and two new birds Gadwall and a Stock Dove.

Through the afternoon we also saw Mute Swans, Greylag and Canada Geese, Shelduck, Herons and plenty of Crows and Black Headed Gulls. There was a great abundance of fungus too, which i'll post separately as we saw so much.

In the Garden

It's been a busy couple of weeks in our garden. We have up to 24 Goldfinch, with over half of them juveniles in and around the feeders, Blue, Great and Coal Tits, Robins, Starlings, House Sparrows, Collared Doves, Woodpigeons, Greenfinch, Magpies. A rare visit from a Chaffinch a couple of times too. The Dunnocks have been a bit scarce but the past couple of days we've had two or three around. The Blackbirds are starting to show up again in the trees, not quite venturing into the garden yet but it's nice to see and hear them around.

There have even been two new garden firsts, yesterday a Chiffchaff, which to be fair spent most of the time in the neighbours garden but I did get a few blurry shots through the window and it did make in to mine just! This morning we had a Great Spotted Woodpecker in our tree, it wasn't there long enough to grab the camera unfortunately. I have never seen a Woodpecker in our town in the 8 years i've lived here so to get one in the garden albeit briefly is fantastic. Fingers crossed something on our feeder will entice it back again.

Gallows Hill

We spent Saturday afternoon walking around Gallows Hill in Otley until it got too muddy to keep going! The trees and bushes were laden with berries though we hardly saw any birds around taking advantage.

In fact we only saw the odd Woodpigeon and a lbj in the trees, which from this photo is most likely to be a Chiffchaff. Unfortunately it wasn't singing to no help there.

We got caught in a couple of rain showers, even though the sun was shining across the river. It produced this Rainbow just over the water, which my little one spotted. All the rain meant the river was pretty full and very fast flowing, we watched some ducks struggling against the current a while before they finally gave in and went with the flow.

A few of these strange looking plants were dotted about under the trees, I don't recall seeing anything like this before, any ideas?

This was the only fungus we saw and I had to pretty much sit in the mud to get a photo but I liked how it looked (I know who thought i'd get excited about fungus!).

Just to finish off with a few other shots from the day.

Waterton Countryside Discovery Centre

After seeing signs for this place on numerous visits to friends in Wakefield we finally made the detour to check it out. We walked around the lake at the Anglers Country Park. Despite it being early afternoon and packed in the car park once we were walking there was enough space to enjoy the afternoon without being too crowded with people and dogs. The park is full of information boards which our little one always checks out.

There are two hides on the site, one overlooking The Pol and one overlooking an area of the lake called The Shallows. The one at The Pol seemed a little overlooked by a lot of people as it was hidden down a boardwalk, which was fine by us! It was pretty quiet with a couple of Moorhens and a few dragonflies, we did hear we had just missed a Water Rail though.

The Shallows hide was a great spot and is in a reserve area of the lake where some of the land is restricted, our friends told us that part of the are was cordoned off earlier this year when the birds were breeding.

As we walked to it there was quite a few Swallows overhead, they turned out to be nesting nearby and we actually saw 3 or 4 chicks with their wide open mouths being fed by one of the adults. Our little one loved seeing that the best I think.

From the hide we saw many Lapwing and Canada Geese, both with lots of youngsters. Three Cormorants sat on a raft and a fourth flew in while we watched. There were Crows and Starlings by the waters edge too. A Heron stood on the furthest island with it's back to us the whole time! Again there were Moorhens, with Mallards and Coots too. We saw a pair of new birds for us - Greenshank.


Our walk also produced House Martins, Goldfinch, Chaffinch, Great Crested Grebes and a lone Pied Wagtail.


We will definitely be back, it will be interesting to see what other birds may turn up in The Shallows over the winter months.

Here are some of the other things we saw.

Not sure what this caterpillar is but we saw them at Rodley too.

Ruddy Darter (?)

Plenty of flora too