Edgbaston Reservoir.

Great trip to Edgbaston Reservoir today where there wasn't a single cloud, just blue skies for as far as the eye could see.

As well as blue skies it was great to see juvenile birds, birds on the nest as well as building nests and the flowers and trees really coming to the fore, the trees in particular looked stunning.

I saw eight juvenile Coot, two sets of four, but there have may have been more as they were still actually on the nest with the parent still present, there were also at least twenty nesting Coot with others building nests.

In one of the two main areas of woodland I inadvertently scared off a Buzzard which was good news for all the birds present in that area of the reservoir, as well as all the birds you'd expect to see and hear there was a Mistle Thrush singing to it's hearts content, it was a pleasure to hear it having a good old sing song.

Birds seen today were, Buzzard, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Chiffchaff, Chaffinch, Wren, Robin, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Mistle Thrush, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Feral Pigeon, Carrion Crow, Magpie, Mute Swan, Great Crested Grebe, Moorhen, Coot, Mallard and Canada Goose.

Butterflies seen today were Small White, Speckled Wood and Orange Tip.

I did notice upon arrival that the water levels were extremely high and talking to a local who's lived adjacent to the reservoir for over twenty three years he told me he's never seen them so high himself, what was more amazing was the amount of water running into the canal from the reservoir, it was gushing out at a very high speed without making any difference to the water levels.

As you can see from the above photo there were also very large Carp present, these fish clearly migrate to the warmer areas of the water as their were a good number in one of the shallow 'corners' where I've never seen them before.

As you can see I've left the most depressing aspect from today until last, when I went to the section where the newer trees have been planted to check how many were still intact I could smell burning wood when I noticed the above aberration, what an absolutely disgusting thing to do, sod nature, sod wildlife, in fact sod everybody else but us because we are so selfish, totally unacceptable and abhorrent, still I picked up all of the litter which included over forty bottles of empty lager, as well as empty food packaging etc, for some reason I decided to smell the rubbish which was an extremely bad idea as it made me throw up, I won't do that again ! Apart from that most of the trees still remained intact with only a few snapped by the mindless morons that do such things. I must also say thank you to the people at 'Midland Sailing Club' who are located on the reservoir for allowing me to use their facilities to wash my hands after I'd deposited all the litter.

I'll finish on a good note and say that it's great to see the Mason Bees enjoying the warm weather in my back garden today, they are never active for very long but it's great to see them when they are.