Barnes Wetland Centre

Who would have thought that Sunday 1st March would have been such a sunny day after the week we had. Only Lynne joined us at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust's Barnes Wetland Centre on a glorious, but cold, day.

We started our wandering on the West Route with a visit to the just-fed otters which were, as expected, very cute. This route takes you through the Wetlands of the World, showing a collection of about 40 species of birds which were bred and raised in captivity. This has helped save some of these birds from extinction. Because many of these birds were used to people they took no notice of you walking near them and it was great to see them really close.

On our way around the West Route we went into a couple of hides overlooking the main lake with many ducks, geese, and gulls to observe. At one we saw a small island with dozens of sunbathing cormorants on it and nine herons spread amongst them who would every now then have a short punch up and then settle back down again.

After lunch we took the South Route, which would be very colourful in the summer as there were many wild flower gardens, but were now just starting to show spring flowers. We worked our way around to the Peacock Tower which not only overlooks the main lake, but also the Grazing Marsh and Water Scrape.

 Peter & Maz Gamble    4th March 2020