Meriden Park and Cole End Bank, Solihull.

Great morning birding in the early morning sunshine at Meriden Park and Cole End Park Local Nature Reserve in Solihull, always nice to get up at the crack of dawn and have the car park to myself upon arrival.

Highlight of the day is easy today, the sight and sound of my first fledglings of the year which is always an exciting event, this year the honour went to a great flock of Blue Tits, hard to tell how many there were because they were among Silver Birch trees coming into leaf but it did appear that they were in double figures, judging by their size and their downy feathers it looked like that they could have just fledged, baby birds are always great to see and leaves you wanting to see more and more. 

Then of course it's always a pleasure to see waterfowl on the nest, today there was Mute Swan (1), Canada Goose (4) and Coot (3), there could be many more on the big island that's impossible to see in because of the leaf cover. Just as I'd said that no Coots had made the bad decision to build a nest right below the bridge as they have done on previous occasions I noticed that there was one was literally building a nest as I looked below, fingers crossed the ne'er do wells leave the nest well alone, funnily enough the Mute Swans have built a nest on the mudflats instead of the island as they usually do but that might be because they failed to raise any young at all last year which is a mystery I never got to the bottom of. The nest the Mute Swans have built this year is huge, it's easily the biggest I've ever seen !

On the houses that border a part of Meriden Park it was brilliant to see a sizeable amount of House Sparrow either collecting nesting material or taking insects into various eaves of the houses, hopefully it will be a bumper breeding year for the humble House Sparrow, they will always remain to be one of my favourite birds.

Birds seen today were Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Chiffchaff, Goldfinch, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Wren, Robin, Song Thrush, Jay, Blackbird, Woopdigeon, Feral Pigeon, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Grey Wagtail, Little Egret, Grey Heron, Mute Swan, Moorhen, Coot, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Canada Goose and Hybrid Domestic/Greylag Goose.

Cole End Park is also a prime spot to see Six-spot Burnet day flying Moth so I'll definitely be going back in July/August to hopefully find some but I shall be back here before then to see how the nesting waterfowl are fairing.

Thanks to everyone that takes the time out to read my blog, it tends to be a little bit longer at this time of the year with birding activity on the increase and also the emergence of butterflies.