Grandma P's Ramblings Through Life: Pulborough Brooks with friends.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Pulborough Brooks with friends.

What a lovely day out!
We met up with Stella, John and Barbara at Pulborough Brooks.
It is a nature reserve run by the RSPB.
Stella brought extra binoculars and much knowledge about birds.

The reserve is situated above the water meadows surrounding the River Arun. Just now the valley is completely flooded.

We walked and talked and laughed and shared stories as we walked through the woods.

Bill and I were happy taking photographs of views and wildlife.
Here Bill shares a view with Barbara.

At the end of the morning we enjoyed excellent meals in the cafe.

I can recommend the spicy butter bean and courgette bake. Bill took advantage of the lamb's liver on the menu - I don't like liver and so Bill rarely gets it.

We posed for Bill's camera after the plates had been cleared.

You might think that the star attraction at a bird reserve would be of the feathered kind. And we did see many birds.

But for all of us, perhaps, it was the adders who gave the most pleasure.

We saw three of them sun bathing by the hedgerow above the water.

Even Barbara, who didn't think she was comfortable with snakes, was enthralled.

We spent some time by the water focussing on the distant water birds.

The spotting scope or monocular was a real bonus because the features of the different types could be made out clearly.

There were wigeon, teal, pintails and many others.

Barbara had greeted Peter along the path - he is one of the RSPB volunteers and also one of her neighbours.

He also had a monocular.

I have never had much knowledge of water birds and so this morning was a real education for me.

The first bird on this blog posting, however, is very well known to all of us - and the last one Bill and I saw.

As we walked back to the car I was almost deafened by the bird song of the robin.

He sat on the branch, singing away for Bill to take this magnificent photograph.

The others had gone by this time. Bill and I actually went back into the centre for the call of nature.

We were glad we did.

All the while we had been walking, Stella had suggested we keep looking on the ground for the redwings and fieldfares - did we see any? No - they were obviously somewhere else!

But when we went back into the centre there was a host of them on the grass just outside the window and the volunteer there had his huge binoculars on a tripod trained upon them.

Just outside the visitor's centre the blue tits and great tits were enjoying a feeding frenzy.

As we had walked around we discussed the calls of various birds.

Peter, the volunteer we tagged along with for a while got it just right when he described the call of the great tit as being like a squeaking wheelbarrow!

But none of them seemed to know that a wood pigeon is doing much more than cooing - it is telling us that "My toe bleeds Betty".

I have just looked this up to make sure that this was not just a family fact, and there it was - several sites talking of this fact.

I have quoted briefly from a letter to the Times, which confirms the news of the poor pigeon's toes.

I just think it utters the word "Look" at the end, not "Oh".

Sir, My father, who was a noted translator of birdsong, insisted that pigeons constantly bewailed the fact that “My toe bleeds, Betty” repeated three times in increasing agony, followed by a final “oh”.

Bill found it hard to get a shot of the water birds - even with his good telephoto lens they were just too far away