Birdsong Breakfast

As the sun rose at Foxglove this morning, the reserve was already a hive of activity. The reason for this was the annual Birdsong Breakfast. This popular event sees people from far and wide, emerging bleary eyed from their beds during the hours of darkness to arrive at the field centre in time for dawn. The moon was still up, above the reedbeds, as forty two people joined us for a walk around the reserve.

Dividing into groups we headed out onto the reserve to investigate which birds we could hear singing. Everything was damp and laden with raindrops.

Over 30 different bird calls were identified. It is nice to be out on the reserve as the sun is coming up - the dawn light is always rather pretty.

The bluebells are at their best at the moment, and with the yellow gorse, make a lovely sight at dawn.

Afterwards, we all headed out onto the military ranges to see what we could find there. Black grouse were seen and curlew chicks were also found. This curlew, with its beak open appears to be mid call!

Finally we all headed off to Wathgill for a well-deserved fat boys' breakfast. With such mixed weather in recent days we wondered whether we would even be able to run the event at all, but the day dawned bright and relatively mild and everything went ahead as planned. We are grateful to those who came to lead the bird song walks.