Thursday May 12 - to boldly go

 Although I appreciate that spring is not over, and indeed this could be my best time of the year for a decent wader, I have also been nursing a desire to go back into exploring mode, to seek out new habitats and undiscovered bird populations...etc etc.

So on Tuesday I picked out the top left hand extremity of my Circle, and went to it. The area in question includes Red Hill Farm, so I'm calling it Red Hill. I love visiting new places, but there is an obvious downside. They are unvisited because as far as anyone has ascertained, there's nothing there.

I can confirm that my visit contained no surprises, unless you count the discovery that the summit of Wast Hill (near Red Hill) is actually the highest point in my Circle. Cobley Hill has been dethroned. Mind you, it's a bit open to interpretation whether the actual summit is in the Circle.

In the absence of anything out of the ordinary, I did at least have a decent view to look at. Maybe it could be an autumn raptor watchpoint?

The view from (nearly) the top of Wast Hill

Feeling I needed to give myself a chance, I headed for Alvechurch Fishery. An extensive series of fishing pools with open access (there's even a cafe), it sits below the dam at Lower Bittell Reservoir. The largest pool contains a lightly vegetated island while the pool has a bit of a wader-friendly edge. Not that there were any on my visit, but a pair of Common Terns flew in and landed on the island before returning to the reservoir.

Common Tern back at the reservoir

Numerous Swifts were flying overhead, and 20 or 30 Sand Martins were occupying the airspace above the dam. Unfortunately I don't have a permit for the reservoir any more, so I couldn't check, but it looked to me as though they might be preparing to nest in the dam wall. (I checked the latest WMBC Report when I got home, and sure enough they were nesting in the brickwork in 2019).

Below the towpath, on the fishery side, is a bank of wild flowers. These attracted a good selection of spring butterflies including my first Red Admiral of the year.

This morning, undeterred by a modest bird list at Red Hill, I picked another area to the north of Redditch. This was Kings Norton Golf Course. It occupies the space between Weatheroak Hill and Wythall (and is nowhere near the Birmingham suburb of Kings Norton).

I had never been here before (unless you count a brief period in the 1990s when I used to jog along the roads surrounding it in a failed attempt to get fit) but I am aware that a decade earlier a ringing group was monitoring a local population of Tree Sparrows, and that even Pied Flycatcher had bred there. 

I am sure those days are long gone and I didn't find any sign of either species, but the habitat may still be available.

I stuck to the well marked footpath and emerged with nothing better than a Mistle Thrush, a Nuthatch, and a few Whitethroats on my paltry low thirties bird list.

More exploring is likely.