Our secret nature reserve

Sandy Point Nature Reserve, at the end of the garden of our holiday house, has given us a lot of pleasure over the last week. The nature reserve is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is a sensitive area of rare maritime heathland, sand dunes and grassland. Whitethroats fly here from Africa, whilst linnet are a year-round resident and dartford warblers breed on site.

Although we were a little disappointed that the reserve was closed to the public, that actually turned out to add to the mystery and excitement. Instead of exploring every inch of it, we've had to sit on our balcony and glimpse whatever decides to show itself to us. We've also spent a lot of time listening as all sorts of warbling and twittering came out of there, often without us ever actually seeing what was making the noise!

The highlight of our stay had to be the lovely song thrush that sat in a tree next to us and sang every morning and evening for at least half an hour. What a joy that's been!

The second best thing was the fox that we saw every day out on the grassy area. He didn't seem interested in the bunnies that were out there and seemed quite happy strolling around in broad daylight.

 

 

The hedges have been full of garden birds, including blackbirds, dunnocks, great tits, long-tailed tits and blue tits. We also saw lots of sparrows (which was a good job as BMG missed our sparrow family from back home), greenfinches and goldfinches.

Hose sparrows

Great tit

 

Blue tit

 

Greenfinch

On Sunday we saw a kestrel hovering over the reserve.

Then on Monday evening I heard a lovely warbling song and there was a linnet sat on top of a tall twig, posing for me. I'd never seen one before, in fact I didn't even know what it was, except I'd looked up birds that we might see on the reserve and that was one of them. It was a bit too far away to get a very clear photo, so I borrowed one from the RSPB showing what it should look like!



My photo of the linnet



Linnet (borrowed the photo from the RSPB site)

What a great place to have at the end of our garden... and now we're going home.