{"id":1822,"date":"2009-04-13T22:40:43","date_gmt":"2009-04-13T22:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/2009\/04\/rye-meads-rspb-reserve\/"},"modified":"2009-04-13T22:40:43","modified_gmt":"2009-04-13T22:40:43","slug":"rye-meads-rspb-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/?p=1822","title":{"rendered":"Rye Meads RSPB Reserve"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Bank holiday Monday and it looked like the skies might clear for the first time in the long four day weekend. So off we drove to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rspb.org.uk\/reserves\/guide\/r\/ryemeads\/index.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rye Meads wildlife reserve<\/a>&#0160;near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire &#8211; a slightly strange split between RSPB and Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust. It&#39;s also right next to the Rye House go-karting track where Lewis Hamilton apparently learnt his craft, and I&#39;ve been karting many a time. So I can highly recommend this spot on at least two counts!<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Just a very quick report for now: it&#39;s a fairly large place with loads of lagoons, ditches, reed beds, ponds etc. and 11 hides from which to look out for interesting things. A couple of notables below (but more to come).<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>First up, a lone Redshank. It took a bit of leafing through the book of longish billed wadey things to figure this one out.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401156f2217a1970c\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"RyeMeadRedshank 6472\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e0158883401156f2217a1970c \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e0158883401156f2217a1970c-400wi\" style=\"width: 400px; \" \/><\/a>&#0160;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">Next, a tufted duck &#8211; this is a male. The female is all dark and without the obvious tufting on the back of the head.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e01588834011570190026970b\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"RyeMeadTuftedDuck 6474\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e01588834011570190026970b \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e01588834011570190026970b-400wi\" style=\"width: 400px; \" \/><\/a> <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">An Oystercatcher, with it&#39;s very colourful bill. Apologies for the poor sharpness of this photo. It was probably at least 50m away.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e015888340115701900cc970b\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"RyeMeadOysterCatcher 6475\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e015888340115701900cc970b \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e015888340115701900cc970b-400wi\" style=\"width: 400px; \" \/><\/a> <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\">Finally, a Shoveller &#8211; a duck with a great big spade like bill. More interesting sights to come&#8230;<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e01588834011570190271970b\" onclick=\"window.open( this.href, &#39;_blank&#39;, &#39;width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0&#39; ); return false\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"RyeMeadShoveller 6477\" class=\"at-xid-6a00e5550e01588834011570190271970b \" src=\"http:\/\/justthesam.com\/wp-content\/tp\/6a00e5550e01588834011570190271970b-400wi\" style=\"width: 400px; \" \/><\/a> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bank holiday Monday and it looked like the skies might clear for the first time in the long four day weekend. So off we drove to Rye Meads wildlife reserve&#0160;near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire &#8211; a slightly strange split between RSPB and Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust. It&#39;s also right next to the Rye House go-karting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photography","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justthesam.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}