As summer draws to a close we hope you all had a wonderful time viewing our summer visitors and are looking forward to seeing the autumn colours as much as we are.
We’ll start with your sightings at our Willington Gravel Pits reserve including a snipe, which has a flexible beak tip full of nerves for sensing worms underground. Also spotted were a few of our smaller wading species the coot and the moorhen, which look similar except for their beaks, the former’s is white and the latter’s is red and yellow. A cormorant was spotted at Willington too, as this waterbirds’ feathers are not waterproof members of this species can often be seen perched near water holding out their wings in the sun to dry themselves off. Also sighted was one of our smallest birds of prey, the sparrowhawk, which employs a range of hunting technics including ambushing and flying low to fool its prey which are often small birds. At our Miller’s Dale reserve a bank vole, our smallest vole weighing up to just 40g, was seen.
