The walk started off with a rarity close to the dam: a Long-tailed Duck (Clangula hyemalis), which had been on the reservoir since Wednesday and already attracted a lot of visitors.

Long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis)

The Long-tailed duck nests in pools and along coast in the Arctic tundra and is normally seen off the coast during the winter, so an inland bird that stayed in the same place for a few days was very welcome.

We walked anti-clockwise round the reservoir, and most of what we saw was birds, though we also spotted a number of flowering plants and some insects.

One of the pieces of colour that we found on an otherwise dull day was berries, in particular the berries of White Bryony (Bryonia dioica) and Bittersweet or Woody Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara). There were also plenty of Ivy (Hedrea helix) flowers with Common Wasps (Vespula vulgaris) on them: one of the few insects we saw during the afternoon.

White Bryony (Bryonia dioica), Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris), Redwings (Turdus iliacus) and Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago).

Winter thrushes were present in trees to the east of the reservoir, where we saw both Fieldfares (Turdus pilaris) and Redwings (Turdus iliacus) together with Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis), White/Pied Wagtails (Motacilla alba) and a Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea).  At the north-east end of the reservoir we saw nine Common Snipe (Gallnago gallinago) on the edge of the reedbed, where a Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) also showed itself briefly.  In total we saw 37 species of birds.  A full report including a list of species of all taxon groups will be published in a forthcoming newsletter.