Wildlife Trusts Lower Moor Farm – New Year’s Day 2018

Happy New Year! Today I decided to make the most of the final day off from work and take a trip out to Wildlife Trusts Lower Moor Farm.  It was raining heavily this morning but the sun was due to appear this afternoon, so I arrived at the site early afternoon as the clouds cleared.  I headed to the hide looking out over Cottage Lake.  The feeders on the left were covered in birds flitting back and forth; 5 long-tailed tit, 2 robin, 5 bullfinch, 6 great tit, 9 blue tit, 3 chaffinch, 1 dunnock, 2 blackbird, 1 starling and 2 reed bunting.  The long-tailed tits were flitting across in front of the hide and back to the feeders, they are such lovely little balls of fluff! some got a little braver and sat on the floor feeding by the hide. The rest of the lake was fairly quiet with just a few sightings; 2 cormorant, 2 carrion crow, 13 woodpigeon, 2 magpie, 4 mallard and 1 great spotted woodpecker.  A few people came in and asked if I had seen the otter?! Sadly not.  The sky clouded over at one point and a very light rainbow could be seen against the clouds.

I did take a walk around to a couple of the other hides, spotting 2 mute swans and a camouflaged grey heron.  It seems the otters were seen this afternoon on Swallow Pool when they crossed from one bank to the other.

Lower Moor Farm – May 2016

05:30 seemed a horrendous time to be getting up on a Bank Holiday Monday but I had heard a while ago that Otters had been seen at Lower Moor Farm and this was the first chance I’d had to get there early.

Lower Moor Farm Nature Reserve - Mute Swan

It was overcast when I got to the site at 07:30. I popped into the first hide to have a quick scan and was greeted by the site of a pair of Mute Swan’s and their 2 Cygnets, the rest of the lake was quiet. I then headed to the hide at Swallow Pool where the Otters had been seen. After a fair few hours of watching, unfortunately I hadn’t seen any.  I did however see Mallard’s fighting (trying to drown each other might be a better description!), Greylag Geese flying over, Blue tits feeding and a Kingfisher that did a few flybys! The Muncjac Deer took me by surprise as it was just to the right of the hide, about 25ft away. It was spooked by a man that came into the hide though unfortunately so I only managed to take a couple of photographs before it ran off.

On my way back to the car park I again popped into the hide on Cottage Lake. I like that the bird table is quite close so you can clearly see the smaller birds that come to feed.  I wasn’t expecting a squirrel to show up though! but it obviously had learnt the bird food is there and was happily eating what it could. On the way out I walked around the pools to see what smaller creatures were about. I’m still learning which insects are which and still get confused, so have to rely on the Internet when I get home to help me out!

My full list of sightings for the day were:
Birds: Mute Swan, Robin, Chaffinch, Mallard, Reed Bunting, Blackbird, Long-tailed tit, Blue tit, Bullfinch, Woodpigeon, Carrion Crow, Kingfisher, Moorheen, Dunnock, Great tit, Canada Geese, Great Crested Grebe, Greylag Goose
Mammals: Muntjac Deer, Grey Squirrel
Insects: Common Blue Damselfly, Green Nettle Weevil

Below are a few record shots of some of my sightings…