Today I headed off for the morning at the Fairburn reserve. I hadn’t been for several weeks what with the recent holiday and jobs around the house etc, so was looking forward to the visit. Sadly the weather wasn’t on my side today. The forecast had been all over the place and today was no exception, we had a Amber weather warning for strong winds and gales! I arrived at the reserve around 9.30am called into the visitors centre for a catch up with the wardens and a coffee before heading off the ‘Pick up hide’.

It was 11C as I settled in at the hide, cloudy with the occasional sunny period which caused all sorts of problems having to constantly tweek the ISO setting on my camera when the sun came out. Within minutes of setting up the camera gear it started to rain, followed by strengthening westerly winds which blew straight through the windowless windows of the hide and into your face. On the lake in front of the hide were several Coots, a Grey Heron was having a productive morning fishing and on the water’s edge a Little Egret. The wind being that strong that on several occasions it blew the Heron and Little Egret off balance and they had to do a fly past lap to settle themselves before landing again and resume their feeding.

Over on the feeders the Great Tits and Blue Tits were regular visitors, along with the Tree Sparrows and several Robins. Male and female Pheasants were busily hoovering up under the feeders whilst the Willow Tit kept popping in for a meal. Over in the field to the right of the hide a Kestrel was doing its best to hunt but the wind kept blowing it about too much so it headed off towards the Lin Dyke hide. I watched a small flock of eight Canada Geese fly over in neat formation heading towards the ‘Coal Tips Ponds’. A pair of Grey Squirrels were regular visitors to the feeders and several Bank Voles were flitting too and fro in front of the hide. By eleven o’clock it was becoming quite unpleasant with the wind and rain so decided to call it a very short day and head back to the warmth of the visitors centre and another coffee.