A Spring Visit to Amwell

31st March 2025

My first visit to Amwell this year to see what was about. The ducks were now in their breeeding pllumage like these male Teal and Shoveler.

A pair of Oystercatchers were on their usual island in front of the White Hide, but were not quite ready to nest just yet as they left the site after an hour.

What was a surprise today was to see a pair of Goldeneye from the Gladwin Hide. I had assumed that any Goldeneye would be long gone.

But the stars of the show today were the Snipe feeding in the dead vegetation on the scrape in front of the viewpoint. At first they were all buried in the vegetation and were therefore hard to count, but eventually all came out on to the muddy puddles and showed well allowing an accurate count to be made.

There were 16 birds present, a good count for this time of the year, but despite some concentrated scanning of the flock I can assure you without fear of contradiction there was not a single Jack Snipe amongst them.

Also good to meet Mike from Ware and have a catch-up with my old mate Ron Cousins.