Welcome back ! we had finished part one as I was heading under the A5 onto the south section of the river walk and then into lodge lake
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| River Walk - South Section - Conifer Plantation is on the right up a hill |
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| Looking towards Lodge Lake Sluice |
Typically there was very little along this section , its the most open after the Stevie Wonder school of butchers have been let loose with a chainsaw , but the tension that mounts as you walk into lodge lake proper .......
I split Lodge Lake up into 5 sections - Big Arm , Smew Arm , Southern Pond, the Channel and Reedbed - the channel is actually part of Smew arm , but it breaks the sections down - Mondays haul was as follows - Big Arm - 3 Great Crested Grebes, 5 Cormorant, 145 Black Headed Gulls, 2 Mute Swans and 6 Canada Geese
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| Big Arm looking North |
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| Bully ! all this Mute Swan does is chase a pair of Canada Geese around ! |
Moving round the Big arm you come to the Southern Boundry Sluice and Southern Pond area , the pond area drew a whole Coot and 2 moorhens, while the sluice bushes held Great Spotted Woodpecker and 6 Bullfinches
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| Southern Boundry |
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| Southern Pond looking a lot better then it is ! |
After walking round Southern Pond i had a nice surprise in the start of the channel - a smart summer plumaged LITTLE GREBE (YT-59) it eventually followed me all along the channel out into Smew Arm
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| Channel pond - the Little Grebe was under the water on the right when I took this |
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| The Channel |
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| Tree resting Black Headed Gulls! |
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| The Channel opening out onto Smew Arm - You can just see fishermans island |
The Smew arm is much less busy then Big arm, the Little Grebe moved out to the hidden bay , there was a WATER RAIL along the northern edge which flew between two reedbeds and a Great Spotted Woodpecker flew over , from here a quick walk round fishermans Island brings you to the Reedbed
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| Hidden Bay on Smew Arm - the Little Grebe is in this picture ! |
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| View of Smew arm from Fishermans island looking north |
The reedbed is made up of 4 areas - Fishermans bed , Cettis left and Cettis right and then the Clump.
On Monday there was 4 Reed Buntings and 2 Bullfinches in various bits !
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| Fishermens Bed |
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| Cettis Left (the other side of Fishermens bed) |
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| Cettis Right ( the Clump is the tall trees in background) |
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| The Clump ( this was where the Treecreeper was a few days ago) |
And then we are back on the Loop back to Bradwell - which will appear in Part 3
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| View looking north across Smew Arm - The Water Rail was in this front bed. |
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| View looking west down northern shore - the underpass is just on the right |
Nice! Recognise some of those spots, although don't remember the reed beds.
ReplyDeletePretty sure we tried there on a bird race and got water rail and poss cettis ? Oh and little grebe !
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