WFV, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust North Cave Wetlands, 3.3.26

A beautiful sunny day greeted us on arrival at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s North Cave reserve.  This site has a wealth of habitats including shallow and deep water lakes with wide margins and islands, reedbeds, grassy banks and meadows, hedgerows and wooded fringes.  The Trust took over the site in 2000 and since then it has expanded as the company quarrying for sand and gravel releases areas where extraction has been completed.  These are then repurposed by the Trust and nature is once more allowed to return.

Our party of 10 started off as a group but as the day progressed we separated to explore this extensive site as our individual interests dictated.  Over the course of my walk round woodland birds were in abundance heralding the start of spring.  Blue, great and long-tailed tits were seen as well as wren, robin, reed bunting, dunnock, goldfinch and greenfinch.  The latter for me was a real bonus as it is a bird that I now sadly rarely see.  On the various stretches of water I saw mute swans, mallard, widgeon, pochard, coot, goldeneye, great crested grebe, tufted duck, cormorant and gadwall.  Lapwing, curlew and oystercatcher were in evidence and on catching up with Stuart later he told me he had seen an avocet.  Two of the more notable spots were an Egyptian goose and a Mediterranean gull.  There were also large flocks of black-headed gulls in breeding plumage.

Alice recorded 16 plants in flower and saw a cock pheasant.  She was also lucky to see an early brimstone on the wing enjoying the benefit of the warm spring sunshine,  Thanks go to Julia for driving and also ably leading as usual.

Sally Tetlow