Weekend Trips
Occasionally the Club holds weekend trips to locations further afield. Normally the purpose of these trips is to see birds we wouldn't normally be able to see closer to home such as Black Grouse or wild Barnacle Geese. In recent years the Club has run 2 weekend trips, one in March 2015 to World's End, North Wales to see the Black Grouse lek and the other to Caerlaverock WWT to see wild Barnacle Geese, White Fronted Geese and Red Kites. You can see a summary of each trip with photographs below. The Club has run weekend trips from its inception and you'll find a bit of information on that on our About Us page. Watch out for more weekend trips in the current programme on the Field Meetings page.
Members on our 3 day trip to Caerlaverock and surrounding areas, November 2016.
Caerlaverock WWT, November 2016
From Monday 21st to Wednesday 23rd November 2016 9 Club members travelled up to Scotland for the away trip to WWT Caerlaverock and the surrounding area to see wild Barnacle Geese and Red Kites. We stayed at the Farmhouse on the reserve at Caerlaverock WWT. On our first day we saw Whooper Swans, found the American Green Winged Teal among the Teal and saw thousands of Barnacle Geese that winter on the Solway every winter. This was a wonderful sight!
Barnacle Geese at Caerlaverock WWT, by Jonathan Fry.
On our second day we travelled north to Ken-Dee Marshes where we saw 50 Greenland White Fronted Geese that winter there, this was all the more special because we only normally see a few on the Lancashire mosses! On our way to the reserve we saw no less than 40 Red Kites! We went onto Bellymack Farm at Laurieston where we saw even more Red Kites, around 90! This farm feeds the Red Kites so we had the good pleasure of seeing them swoop down for the meat right in front of us! We returned to the Farmhouse to see hundreds of Barnacle Geese fly off to roost against the setting sun. During the evening we saw a Badger come to feed on the peanuts put out by the centre staff outside the conservatory! On our final day we remained on the reserve where we saw yet more Barnacle Geese and a female Merlin. We saw 64 species over the 3 days.
World's End, North Wales, March 2015
Over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of March 2015 6 Club members travelled down to World's End in North Wales to see the Black Grouse lek. On our way down we stopped off at Moore Nature Reserve at Warrington where we saw a Glaucous Gull. We stayed at the Travel Lodge in Wrexham and got up early the next morning to be at the Black Grouse lek site for 6am. When we found the lek site we saw around 20 male Black Grouse lekking next to the road, they argued, squawked and fighted for some time before flying off. An awesome sight!
Iceland Gull at Pensarn, by Jonathan Fry.
We then moved onto the nearby Clocaenog Forrest where we managed to see 2 female Crossbills, we stopped off at Llanbedr-y-cennin near Llanwrst where we saw a single Hawfinch, Buzzards and several Red Kites. We also had the great privilege of a Golden Eagle fly over our heads! We stopped briefly at RSPB Conwy to look for Firecrest, but to no avail. We finished our day before heading home by travelling to Pensarn on the coast to see the wintering Iceland Gull which showed very close! We saw 75 species over the weekend.