It was a beautiful morning today, I had been out earlier and walked the dogs for an hour or so and after breakfast once the dogs had gone to sleep I headed over to the reserve at Fairburn Ings. Looking through my past diary entries my last visit to the reserve was on Thursday 22nd March so I was well over due a visit. It was 15C as I parked the car in the car park at just after 9.30am. and made my way to the visitors centre for a coffee and a chat with the wardens. It was a quiet steady walk to the Pick up Hide the first thing I noticed was how green everything had become, all the trees and shrubs were in leaf and the Hawthorn was blossoming nicely. It was 9.45am before I started to set up the camera gear.

Looking over to the Sand martin wall and although the Sand martins hadn’t started to nest there yet, three pair of Mallard ducks quite contently sleeping on top of the wall. 

The main lake in front of the hide looked relatively quiet, a pair of Coots with five tiny chicks entered the water about a hundred yards from the hide, the youngsters looked to have been less than forty eight hours old, their coats still a fluffy down. In the centre of the lake were a pair of Canada Geese performing a ritual dance before mating on the water, it looked quite a brutal liaison especially for the female bird who almost drowned. 

It was nice to see a pair of Tufted Ducks on the water, their lovely shrill call piercing the stillness of the morning air. 

There was a strange atmosphere around the hide this morning, it was very quiet with all but a couple of members of public who popped in for a brief visit. The bird feeders to the right of the hide were empty and hadn’t been filled whilst I was there. Several Dunnock were close by, I could hear them singing quite clearly in the hawthorn bushes around the hide. A pair of Wood Pigeons flew in for a few minutes but left when they realised there was no food, closely followed by a Jackdaw. Several Chaffinch kept me company though, the male birds posing with a mouthful of flies which I presume they were taking back to the nest.

After about an hour I decided to call it a day, I left the hide and followed the riverbank trail to the Kingfisher screen, all quiet there other than a couple of Tree Sparrows, from there I walked back to the centre and down to the Swan feeding platform, hoping to see some Mute Swans and their new families, other than several Mallards and their Hybrids it was quiet, I watched several Black Headed Gulls out in the middle of the lake making a lot of noise and other than that that was it. So a little disappointed I dismantled the camera equipment and headed back to the visitors centre for a coffee before the journey home.