RSPB Middleton Lakes

We decided on Thursday night that we could split our journey home by stopping off at the RSPB newest reserve in the UK at Middleton Lakes, in Tamworth.

We only planned on being there a couple of hours, but ended up staying there for several! The reason was simple enough, it is breathtakingly beautiful there!

I put it right up there with RSPB Strumpshaw Fen (which we visited back in September of last year) as one of the best nature reserves I have visited.

If you live in the Midlands area, I can't recommend it highly enough!

What interested me most whilst we were there, was there were a lot of beginner bird watchers wandering around the reserve. It seems to have captured the interest in the local area.

The bird list for a four hour visit was quite impressive. From the Kestrel hovering in the car park when we arrived we knew it might be a good day.

We saw a small group of tree creepers, nuthatches, long tailed tit, great tit, blue tit, swallows and house martins galore in the farmyard you have to pass. A large flock of house sparrows dust bathing on the path.

Once you eventually get to the lakes (it's a good ten minute walk through woodlands to get to it), there was wildlife galore. Numerous species of dragonfly darting about. The lakes had plenty of birds. Canadian Geese everywhere. The usual coots, moorhens, mallards, tufted ducks, little and great crested grebes. A decent flock of lapwings kept on taking to the air, something was disturbing them, but never did find out. There was a solitary common tern mingling with the black backed and black headed gulls. The occasional rook was foraging in the grass. There is a rookery there, but we didn't see it. There is a heronry too, but we did see the heron! Stars of the show though, were the two barn owls sitting in their nest box. We were lucky to come across a couple of people watching them through scopes, and got great views of them. Simply magnificent birds!

When we eventually found our way back to the car park (we got lost!), our departure gave us great views of another magnificent raptor, with a buzzard swooping low over the fields next to the road out.

For all the birds though, my attention was captured by the sheer number of butterflies around. I managed to capture a number of them with the camera, and I will have some fun flipping through my ID book when I get around to editing the photographs for my Flickr site.

I had to chose this Peacock Butterfly for my blip, as the sheer abundance of colour, vibrancy and vitality it has, matches that of the reserve as a whole.

I assure you, this won't be my last visit to this reserve!