Wiltshire

I spent a few days in Wiltshire during half term. As well the Great Bustard project, I visited Langford Lakes and Stonehenge. I think Starlings might have become my favourite bird.

Langford Lakes is a really nice Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve, being a group of old gravel pits with plenty of hides next to the river Wylye. https://www.wiltshirewildlife.org/langford-lakes

Gadwall, male in marvellous breeding plumage.

Juvenile and adult Black-headed Gull.

Male and female Shoveler.

An unusually pale Greylag Goose.

Lesser Black-backed Gulls, which came into bathe in good numbers.

It was also nice to see my first Water Pipit of the Winter on the reserve.

The relatively new layout at Stonehenge is such an improvement. Visitors now have the freedom to roam the landscape. I am particularly fascinated by the enormous Cursus. It is older than the stone circle, and could even be marking the site of a tornado touch down.

Five distant Roe Deer were visible in rough grassland to the north of the circle.

Starlings looking absolutely fantastic with freshly speckled Winter plumage. By next Summer the speckles will have worn away leaving the feathers with just iridescence.

Pied yarrellii Wagtails.

Rooks in the grass around the circle, just as there probably were when the stones were being erected.