I was at Potteric Carr on Sunday and before I did my little event for them (which was fun, if a bit sweaty) I had a walk around the nature reserve. I saw several of Plantlife’s Pickable12 flowers including quite a lot of Meadowsweet from this hide.
I also saw my first of three Bittern sightings and my first of two Marsh Harriers from this hide. Neither would have been present when Potteric Carr became a nature reserve 50 years ago this year. All seemed fairly normal now – but nonetheless brilliant for all that.
A much younger visitor than myself, a girl of maybe 3 years of age, looked out of the hide at this view and in an excited tone said ‘It’s really wild! There must be gorillas and bears here’ which while being technically incorrect was a great endorsement of this Yorkshire Wildlife Trust site. It made me smile, and it was a smile of pleasure.
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How great to be young with an unclouded imagination. Gorillas there were, I’m sure!
I’m sure that Potteric Carr is a very nice reserve, I’ve only ever been there once for Iberian Chiffchaff. The stumbling block is that it is a YWT site (and yes there are some I visit and have visited on a regular basis) but given recent history at Spurn where the Trust continue to behave badly towards those with a different opinion concerning their new visitor centre one might even say bullying. We now have some people banned from YWT land at Spurn on the excuse they have bad mouthed staff, frankly of some of those banned this is most, most unlikely. More likely a case of trying to silence critics. Of course as a result they have withdrawn all ringing permissions on the peninsular from the bird observatory. If you know the full history of why the YWT and not the YNU own the land you will be as appalled and disappointed as myself. Spurn, particularly the Point is where I honed my skills as a ringer along with visits to the Wash. I will still visit Spurn but support the YWT not a bloody chance indeed a snowball has more chance in hell!