Hey folks,

It was my birthday recently and for a treat we took a drive along the Solway coast to the Caerlaverock (care-lav-o-rock) National Nature Reserve. It’s a beautiful place with views across the Solway Firth and of our largest ‘mountain’, Criffel (really, a large hill, but we’re in the lowlands so it’s about the biggest hill around!).

We also visited Caerlaverock castle, which was somewhere I went a lot as a child. It was nice to see the place is more or less still in one piece.

The reserve isn’t too buys with birds at this time of year, with winter, spring and autumn being the time to see a lot of migrant birds. Nonetheless we were able to see a few little birds, including this meadow pipit and it’s friends. I’ve been trying to get a shot of one of these little guys for a while, so it was very nice of them to show up for my birthday 🙂 It was having a cautious peek at me from behind this clump of grass and mud, before flying off to join its pals.

I’m saying it’s a meadow pipit – there are also water and sand species of pipit. The nature reserve is essentially a meadow that spreads out onto tidal sands and then the wide waters of the Solway, so it could really be either of the three! I’m not knowledgable enough to tell them apart, so we’ll just go with meadow.

Thanks for visiting,

Kaylin