It’s time for April’s Wetland Bird Survey, and with dry weather for quite a while it probably meant little, or more likely no, flood water so it would be interesting to see what was about. Time was tight for me, but Roger joined me again as we did our usual route, heading to Frogshole, then up river to just before Betley. As suspected, there wasn’t much to trouble the notebook, and the only birds we noted were small numbers of Mallards, Mute Swans and Greylag and Canada Geese. By the time we got to north of the confluence my time was up, so I left Roger to it. He told me on the way round that he never used to bother doing the surveys from April through to September; I can see why.

STOP PRESS: Roger has informed me this evening that after I left him he managed to flush 6 Snipe and a…. Jack Snipe! Typical. But well done to Roger!