Castle Espie is a WWT Reserve along the Strangford Lough shore. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Wild birds seen - long-tailed tits, shelduck, mallard (quite a number of broods, one duckling nipped by a male mallard), mute swans, greylag geese, moorhen, coot, tufted duck, wigeon, male goldeneye (very close views), male pintail, blackbird, thrush, chaffinch, coal-tit, pair of whooper swans, black-headed gulls, lesser black-backed gulls, swallow.
Later while working in the garden saw my first swifts of the season overhead. Starlings have hatched in a nest in the big fir tree. Could hear the young and see the adults flying in with food.
Posted by dawnc at May 1, 2004 11:39 PM