THURSDAY – 28th March
I had had arranged my outing today a few months ago, to visit my good friend Christine who lives with her husband in Bury St Edmunds. I have known Christine since my early twenties when I was a lodger in her little cottage in Lavenham, Suffolk. This was when I worked at 'The Lavenham Press' for many years. Until today, I had not seen Christine for nine years! I greeted her with an easter flower arrangement and some easter eggs. It was great to see her again and she hadn't really changed a bit since I last saw her! After coffee, Christine gave me a grand tour of her house and garden, met Garfield the tabby cat and then went to a pub for lunch before going to Lackford Lakes Nature Reserve.
It was bitterly cold again today. I was excited about going to this reserve as I had never been here before. It was certainly a beautiful place – consisting of 121 hectares of wetland, woodland and scrub along with sand heathland, created from former gravel pits and is a SSSI site. There are eight bird hides overlooking lakes and several pools. Star species include kingfisher, but we were not lucky enough to see one today. We did have a nice selection of birds though including: 100+ Fieldfares along with starlings and 1 kestrel on a sandy heath area, 1 Redpoll on niger seed outside the visitor centre, a flock of 10+ Siskin feeding on alders by the entrance to Orchid Hide, great crested grebe, 1w Med. Gull, black-headed gulls, herring gulls along with tufted duck, teal, mallard, shoveler, mute swans, canada geese, egyptian goose, coot, moorhen and 2 grey herons on the Sailing Lake. Lots of plants and trees coming into bud. We managed to get round most of the reserve but it was so icy cold we turned back when we reached 'Atlas Hide'. Back at the carpark a couple of birders informed us that had had a flock of crossbill overhead earlier in the day.
Back at Christine's house I met her husband Clive for the second time only (last time was at their wedding) and he very generously had bought me a present 'in honour of my visit' a wonderful book called 'A Season of Birds' – 'A Norfolk Diary - 1911' – a very kind and lovely surprise. Clive was pretty on the ball for a man (smiley face) and had 'hot' buttered, hot cross buns on tea plates for Christine and I before we had barely taken our shoes off! Very impressed!
Lots of story telling and reminiscing resulted in me leaving much later than I had anticipated and arrived home at around 8.30pm.
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