We had a lovely walk at the RSPB Arne Nature Reserve this afternoon, we had a wander through the reserve, taking in the autumn colours and the fresh smell of peat and pine. We have been to the reserve a number of times and each time we've stopped off at the bird hide which looks out across Poole Harbour. Usually we are the only ones there but today both the lower and higher hides were busy. The tide for once was in so there were lots of birds to spot - this is where we came a bit unstuck, we are quite good I would say at identifying many birds but wading birds is obviously not our thing, there were quiet mutterings around us of sightings of various birds, none of which we had a clue about. Luckily there were details and pictures of wading birds in the hide, so we could take a sneaky look at the birds that the twitchers had spotted then try and spot them ourselves!!!
In the far distance we had dismissed a large group of 'geese' but the reason for the amount of people in the hides was to see the spoonbills!!!! (the so called geese that we had dismissed). I think we can safely say we are not very good twitchers!! We did however spot oyster catchers, egrets, curlews, and sika deer from the hide.
When we got back to the car park the lady RSPB volunteer that was on duty at the information centre asked if we'd had a nice walk and asked if we had seen the spoonbills. She told us all about them and now we know that very few (about 70 birds) come from the Netherlands at this time of year and we had seen about 30 of them, the rest she said could well be at Brownsea Island another of their favourite haunts apparently.
A field of epic cows with even more epic horns of various arrangements!
A leafless silver birch tree covered in ivy almost looking like a fir tree.
Poole Harbour in the distance.
The view from the bird hide and right in the very distance, visible only with binoculars,
spoonbills (zoomed in to infinity and beyond, hence the less than clear photo).
An egret was a bit closer to the hide.
The view from Shipstall Beach.
In front of us, one at a time a group of sika deer crossed the path. We had to be very quick with the cameras but my photos were absolutely rubbish, these of Steve's however were better, I put the photo of the albino deer in despite it being out of focus just because it's special ..... the deer not the photo!
There were a few dead old trees about with many holes in, this one as well as holes in it, had some rather large fungi on it.
On the way back to the car, as the light was fading, in the woods we saw eight grey squirrels scratching about in the leaves. I wonder if they were searching for their last meal of the day?
Beautiful colours.
I asked the lady about a fox with a limp and a bad leg that we had seen on a visit in April, we saw it close to the information centre and it didn't seem frightened or bothered by us at all and walked very close past us. She knew all about the fox and told us that her leg had healed up and she had had a litter in the spring, it was lovely to hear that all appears well with her.
A happy tale after all.
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