This weekend I managed to get to the Slimbridge centre, basically to scope it out some and get a feel for the kind of place it was, and I feel that there is some potential there for me depending on where I want to go with my project. What I liked about this place was the variety of birds they had there, from very exotic to pretty common ones, and it was all wetland birds, which has never been something I've really looked at before. The issue I had with the place was it still seemed very controlled and touristy, I went on Saturday so predictably there were alot of children around so was pretty noisy, but the birds still hung around and didn't seem too phased. They generally seemed alot more tame than I would like to look at, which is a shame because parts of it were really good. As I had limitted time there, I didn't really get too look around the whole place, but I did go in a coule of the hides, which I really found valuable. The first being the Horgarth hide, which faced out over the south lake marsh and scrape, where there were alot of waterfowl, including cormorants and a grey heron as well as more common ones such as plovers (common in winter) and various types on ducks (like tufted ducks and golden eye ducks, which are diving ducks).
While it was good to see such a variety there, I feel that I need to focus on one type of bird perhaps, and look at it as an individual, rather than trying to cover everything. I salso felt that with the selection, there were not alot of typical British birds, which I feel would be good to cover, not only as they'll be more available, but because it'll be easier to find information out about them from local and specialised sources.
Goldeneye duck
The South Lake Mrash
You can just about see the Grey Heron and a Courmorant
Benwick Swans, which are common winter birds, especially round Gloucestershire.
Greater Flamingos, which are part of the centres collection of foreign birds.
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