{"id":1463894,"date":"2017-05-01T18:50:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T17:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?guid=6efe6ef58364421fc6a7b8f399ccb75a"},"modified":"2019-12-23T01:19:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T12:19:01","slug":"slimbridge-wildfowl-and-wetlands-trust-22nd-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/slimbridge-wildfowl-and-wetlands-trust-22nd-april\/","title":{"rendered":"Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust – 22nd April"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a weekend at the cottage in the Cotswolds planned but there was to be little time for birding – I need brownie points for an up coming trip! Still, I managed to convince Sarah that a trip to Slimbridge might be nice and she duly arranged to meet with her sister so that Tobias could play with his cousins.<\/p>\n

My motive was a pair of Black-winged Stilt that had set-up territory on the South Lake and were showing well from the Discovery Hide. So after saying my ‘hello’s’ to relatives I snuck to the Discovery Hide where the stilts were immediately on show no more than 30 metres from the hide. I watched these fantastic birds over the next couple of hours while they fed and often mated around the South Lake.<\/p>\n

The female was clearly smaller and far browner than the male with a darker head and a great deal of flecking. The male, in contrast, was glossy black above with a largely white head and neck and a distinctive pinkish flush on the breast.<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Female Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Female Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Female Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Female Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Female Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Male Black-winged Stilt – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

There wasn’t much else on the South Lake except for at least 18 Avocet and a Greenshank.<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Avocet – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Cormorant and Mallard – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Tufted Duck – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

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Tufted Duck – South Lake, Slimbridge WWT<\/p>\n

A short trip to the Zeiss Hide to look for a Great-white Egret produced several hundred Black-tailed Godwit, a flock of eight Ruff with one bird almost in full summer plumage, four Reed Warbler and two Swallow but no sign of the egret.<\/p>\n

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Mixed flock of Black-tailed Godwit and eight Ruff. The bird, sixth from left, is a very dark Ruff almost in summer plumage and was widely being claimed as a Spotted Redshank! – Zeiss Hide, Slimbridge<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a weekend at the cottage in the Cotswolds planned but there was to be little time for birding – I need brownie points for an up coming trip! Still, I managed to convince Sarah that a trip to Slimbridge might be nice and she duly arranged to meet with her sister so that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1921,"featured_media":2148687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[700,738,938,1288,1097,1678,2221,1028,4546,1052,1411],"class_list":["post-1463894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-black-winged-stilt","tag-cormorant","tag-godwit","tag-mallard","tag-redshank","tag-reed-warbler","tag-ruff","tag-slimbridge","tag-spotted-redshank","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1921"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2148687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}