Carsington October 8th 2020
As the grey clouds and rain cleared six intrepid babes and two very excited dogs followed Jo’s instructions and gathered at the Sheepwash Car Park, social distancing was very carefully observed. Unfortunately Lynn and Helen J weren’t able to make it but at least that meant that we didn’t have the problem of walking in relay teams to keep to the rule of six.
Betty and Bob were very disappointed that Eddie wasn’t able to join us but then he is only a pupppy and might not have been able to keep up so perhaps he will make it next time.
We made the decision to set off walking and see how far we got, there was much to catch up on as we hadn’t managed to meet for some time, no foreign travel tales to tell but lots of explorations of various corners of our own fair island to share.
No one felt important enough to occupy the big chair or was it just that they weren’t certain how recently it had been sanitised!
A stop for elevenses was a good opportunity to remove layers and bobble hats as things had warmed up considerably. This was the point of no return and we had to make the decision whether to turn round or complete the circuit, feeling full of beans we voted to carry on.
Bob seems to be taking social distancing extremely seriously - he could certainly teach Betty a few lessons!
Spot the birds - we had to keep reminding ourselves that we had been set the task of a good haul of birds for our bird list - if only some of us could be bothered to get our binoculars out of our backpacks! At least some of our feathered friends are easy to spot with the naked eye, although perhaps Julia needs to make a return to Specsavers after she posed the question ‘are those people or birds?’
We were also careful to follow the advice of a friendly twitcher and watch out for migrants - hopefully he was referring to the feathers types.
Thankfully we had Maggie’s flask to help us identify any birds that we were unsure about. Although Jo took cheating to another level and shamelessly chatted up all the birders that she came across.
After almost losing Pam at the visitor’s centre we made it back to our starting point for a late lunch, much to the relief of Alison who is a firm believer that lunch should be eaten at midday.
Maggie was a little worried that she might have to jog to make her rendezvous with Chris but we all stepped out and we’re back in good time but no sign of a white Skoda!
Please can I have a bit of your sandwich.... hard to resist that face!
Here is our bird list for the day:
Mallard
Canada geese
Greylag geese
Great crested grebe
Tufted duck
Robin
Magpie
Coot
Moorhen
Pochard
Black headed gull
Black swan
Cormorant
Jackdaw
Bluetit
Little egret
Common gull
Lesser black backed gull
Mute swan
Siskin
Pied wagtail
Chiffchaff
Black cap
Bird of the day is the black swan.
A lovely day was had by all and really good to be able to catch up with everyone. (Hopefully Maggie isn’t still waiting for her lift home!)
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