Tuesday 14th February 2023 - Snuff Mills/Eastville Park

 

This week’s birding trip was to Snuff Mills and Eastville park in Bristol, the 1st time we have visited here since 2020. We parked in the car park at Snuff Mills and decided to start the day with a short walk up the river Frome to the weir. We were soon spotting Blue and Long Tailed Tits, lots of flyover Jackdaws a few Carrion Crows in the trees plus an odd Woodpigeon. On the river was a pair of Mallard and 2 Moorhens.  But the strangest sighting was 12 Magpies sat in the top of a tree and as we looked more kept flying in to the same tree and in the end we counted 23. A Robin was our final sighting here as we walked towards Eastville Park. Our first sighting here was 3 Blackbirds chasing each other through the trees over the river, a Wren was seen working its way through the undergrowth when we spotted 3 Great Spotted Woodpeckers flying line astern across our path and into a tree, the strange thing about it was about an hour later as we were leaving the park they were still flying around in the same area. David found 2 Stock Doves on a branch but it took me a while to find them as I was looking at the wrong tree. Approaching the lake we added Great Tit to our lists, and on the lake were 5 Coots, 4+ Moorhens, 17 Mallard, 3 Herring Gulls, 8 Mute Swans, 4 Canada Geese and at least 133 Black Headed Gull, the water was just covered with them.

Mute Swans - Eastville Park (Bath Birdwatcher)

A Cormorant was in a tree over the lake. Walking back to the car we added Nuthatch, Goldfinch and Greenfinch making our days total 32, 10 less than 2 years ago when we visited on the 10th of February. You will notice from the following picture how much more advanced some Black Headed Gulls are than others.

Black Headed Gulls - Eastville Park (Bath Birdwatcher)

Robin - Eastville Park (Bath Birdwatcher)




 

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