My Birdwatcher's Guide: A trip to the RSPB Frampton Marsh Reserve, Lincolnshire

It is a lovely nature reserve at Frampton Marsh in Lincolnshire, we set off at about 8.30am from my house, my friend Simon picked me up and we set off to Clive's house to pick him and Sandra up before setting off to Frampton. It is quite a nice journey and fairly straightforward to apart from some of the roads which are very bouncy.

After an hour and a half journey, we parked our car and met up with the other members of the Group, Mark and Sharon in the Visitor Centre which has a great view over the main lake. We were then told that a Spoonbill was around and the man in the Centre set it up so we could look through the Scope and see it in the distance, mind you with a Scope it was basically in front of us. Spoonbills are big white birds, similiar in shape to an Egret but with an enormous long beak in the shape of spoon, hence its name, younger Spoonbills like the one we were looking at have a grey beak with a hint of orange at the end of them, when they fish they swish their beaks from side to side hoping to catch a fish as they do so. There were lots of butterflies about like the Painted Lady, which is quite colourful.

So we set off for a walk around the reserve and came to a 360 Degree Hide, it was a complete circle with windows all round, hence the name. From the Hide we could see a large number of Black Tailed Godwits and Bar Tailed Godwits, Ruff, Gulls and a lot of Common Terns flying around the skies doing their aerial acrobatics. We also saw a Ruff, Tufted Duck and some Egrets in the distance.

We stayed for a little while and then went on to the Hide the far side of the Lake from the Visitor Centre, which had a great view of an Island of Common Terns with their nests nearby, a lady next to me counted 19 in all. They are nice to watch, then all of a sudden a huge commotion, a Moorhen decided to walk across, the Terns did not like that and swooped down attacking the Moorhen, who did not realise he had done anything wrong but soon ran off into the Reeds to hide.

In front of the Hide was a large number of Greylag Geese with their Goslings, who you could tell they Goslings because of the lack of details in their feathers and their lighter beaks, they stared at us for a little while but then had a big argument between each other and set off into the lake.

After a short while, we decided to go up to the high bank which looks out onto the Wash itself but the Tide was out and it was basically a large grassland with a number of small ponds in. As we got closer to the Bank we could see 2 Spoonbills in the distance, one was swooping his beak in the water and the other one was preening itself. When we got to the top of the bank we had a much better view of the Spoonbill but we could not get a decent picture because its beak was in the water.

At the top of the Bank there were also a number of Black Cows which stared at us for a little while and then decided to walk down the other side of the bank to find some decent grass to eat. While we on the High Bank we saw a Marsh Harrier zooming across the land in front of us, looking around for its next meal, they are a delightful bird with a chunky body and lovely brown plumage.

As we set back to the Visitor Centre, we saw a couple of Sedge Warblers sitting on a post in front of us, they are lovely little birds and I managed to get quite a good picture of one of them.

Frampton is a great reserve this time of the year and well worth a visit.