An eggtastic day at College Lake

College Lake, a BBOWT reserve, is such a great place to visit with kids, especially when they're holding one of their family friendly events. Todays event was all about eggs ...

We started off with a walk down to the hide in the lake. There were lots of Canada geese making a lot of noise and we saw a few greylag geese. A lapwing was near the hide, although it refused to look towards us, so we only got a photo of its back and lovely long crest. Just as we were leaving a heron flew to the bank near us and posed for a photo and we spotted a redshank hiding in the reeds at the edge of the lake.




Greylag goose

Lapwing

Lapwing - beautiful sheen to it's feathers and just look at that fancy crest!

Redshank

Heron

We walked back along the path towards the barn and the 'eggy' activities for the kids. We noticed the ditch to the side of the path was full of frogs and toads, as well as lots of frogspawn and tadpoles.



At the barn we took part in a trail through the woods to work out what a squirrel had for breakfast, we guessed which creature had laid which eggs and we went on a treasure hunt.

Finding the clues in the woodland trail

Which creature laid which egg? BMG only got two the wrong way round and
they were all quite hard

One of the items in the treasure hunt was to find something that would
balance on your nose

We had a good look at some tadpoles, grass snake eggs and a selection of nests made by different birds. It's amazing how different all the nests are!

Watching the tadpoles

Long-tailed tit

Then we watched the birds for a while, both from the window in the barn and the hide in the woods. We saw a yellowhammer and a reed bunting, as well as many of the old favourites: great tits, blue tits, robins, blackbirds, chaffinches and greenfinches.

Yellowhammer

Reed bunting

Robin

The hide in the woods

 

As we were leaving we couldn't help but notice the stunning cowslips growing on the slope by the visitor centre. Such pretty flowers and the perfect end to a lovely morning.

On the way home we drove past Aston Clinton Ragpits, so popped in for a quick look around. The kids enjoyed running up and down the steep banks and Little Brother sad he felt like he was "on top of the world"!

The primroses looked beautiful and were being enjoyed by lots of butterflies and bee flies.

Brimstone butterfly feeding on the primroses

Best of all though, we found a slow-worm, which is a legless lizard. Bug Mad Girl couldn't resist picking it up but she was very gentle and made sure it was safely put back where she found it.