Attenborough - At Fifty Part 01
w/e 08 May 2016
All of this week's pictures were
taken with a Kodak DX6490
On April 30th the Nature Reserve at Attenborough
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its opening by Sir David
Attenborough in 1966. Over that half century the site has matured
to become an award winning facility managed by the Nottinghamshire
Wildlife Trust. I last visited the site in September 2015 on
a cold, grey, wet and dull day during the Autumn Footprints Walking
Festival so under completely different conditions we enjoyed
a very pleasant hour wandering around just a small part of the
Reserve in early May.
The Reserve lies on the flood plain between Attenborough Village
and the River Trent and was originally formed on the gravel extraction
works that created a number of small islands. Many of these islands
are now linked by footpaths and bridges. We entered the site
from the village and crossed over one of the bridges to walk
along the route which is called Main Path.
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To the right of Main Path there is a glimpse of Tween Pond so
named I assume, because it lies between and is surrounded by
Main, Clifton, Conneries and Church Ponds.
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Main Pond lies to the left of Main Path where we spotted a couple
of great crested grebes and a swan as well as many other birds.
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Just before reaching the river, we turned off Main Path to the
right onto Wet Marsh Path which runs between Clifton Pond (above)
and Tween Pond.
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Wet Marsh Path is lined with trees and is just like walking down
a leafy lane although the water is close on both sides.
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There are several structures like this where visitors can stop
and peer through the missing planks to watch the bird life.
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Some of the bird life could be seen across Tween Pond where there
appeared to be a lot of activity.
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And a lot of that activity was centred on the heronry seen here
in a zoomed shot across the pond.
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We continued along Wet Marsh Path passing one of many information
boards on the reserve, this one giving details about Reed Beds
of which there are many in Clifton Pond.
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We made our way to the Keith Corbett Memorial Hide and climbed
the steps for a high level view over the reserve and it's from
there that we'll continue our look at the reserve in Part 02.
Forward to Part 02
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