Watching wildlife can be pretty tough at times. Now I know that nobody likes the boastful, but I think I know you well enough to share a secret talent. I am really good – possibly a bit of an expert – at not seeing things.

Take this evening for example. I was in Wath Ings hide, half an hour before sunset, when I spotted a water rail running along the back of the Willow Pool. I called it, hoping others would…

With Halloween fast approaching, it was strangely fitting that many of the stories from Old Moor today were of a dark and grisly nature. So, abandoning my usual sunny optimism (and with my tongue firmly in my cheek), I will begin tonight with a murderous tale to chill your very blood!

If you are of a nervous disposition, I suggest you skip the next six paragraphs and head straight to those all-important (and calming…

A hawfinch flew south over the Visitor Centre today (thanks to the Barnsley Birders for tweeting this) but chose not to land. A big boo.... to that! Why didn't it land? Doesn't it know what a wonderful place Old Moor is?!

You might wonder why I'm making such a fuss so here's why. Hawfinches are scarce in the UK, red listed in fact. It's not easy to find these birds and get a good view. I've only ever…

It was another brilliant, warm October day in the Dearne Valley today and a chance to enjoy some of the best wildlife and colour the season has to offer.

At Edderthorpe, John Clarkson reported that this morning there were nine little egret, sixty-three wigeon, 260 teal, around 320 golden plover, two ruff, eleven dunlin, approximately seventy redwing (yes, 70), five redpoll and two willow tit (hooray). Thanks John!

Hello again, two blogs in one day…or at least sort of. If you have no idea what I am on about then here’s a link to a blog I published earlier. It’s a ‘blog special’ and is written by visitor Jonathan Marshall. It is well worth a read and it also has a few lovely photos.

Off I go with the sightings from today from some of our satellite sites.

Alan Stonier was at Edderthorpe and spoke of…

Hello there, I have a lovely blog special for you to read. It's written by visitor Jonathan Marshall and he tweeted it to us yesterday. I then persuaded him to let me use his wonderful writing for a guest blog. 

Jonathan visited last Friday and he also includes a few lovely photos.

CRACKING CURLEW SANDPIPER @ OLD MOOR  By  Jonathan Marshall

On Friday I visited Old Moor which is a nature reserve managed by the RSPB…

It was definitely autumnal in the Dearne Valley today though oddly mild for the backend of October. A thick cover of cloud this morning might have had something to do with the temperatures and the fact that sunshine was rationed to the afternoon.

Not that this is a barrier to a great day’s watching of course! Sadly, I only had time for a brief visit to the Reedbed Screen this afternoon. There the newly cleared channel…

Crows are intelligent, long lived birds. They mate for life. This afternoon, at Old Moor’s Wath Ings, I witnessed some remarkable behaviour that shone a new light on those three simple facts.

A peregrine falcon had just emptied the main marsh of almost every bird and cleared the way for the crows. Two of them flew to a stretch of mud just below the hide. The larger of the two then made a short flight towards a…

Hello there. It's time for the next blog from our WEX group. They met again last Saturday and it was a very special meeting as they had a visit from Lisa, the Bug Lady! 

She brought with her a veritable feast of bugs for the children to learn about, watch and hold. There were hissing cockroaches, various fabulous stick insects and a few giant African land snails including a 15 year one named Cyril!

I loved holding…

One of the fascinations of autumn is that feeling of surprise. No matter how many Octobers you’ve been lucky enough to see, you never really know what’s going to happen next. Or when.

Today at Old Moor was a day with two such surprises. The first was that, very early this morning, seven whooper swans were found on the Mere. Sadly, they didn’t hang around for long and left at 07.25 heading east.

The…

“Eerie”, “Spooky” and “Unnatural” were all words used by visitors on the reserves to describe today’s red sun and the peculiar colour of the light this morning. In case you didn’t see it, I gather that dust from the Sahara Desert was dragged into the air by Hurricane Ophelia and gave us that odd red sky: a timely reminder that the world is a very small place really and that every part of it is connected.…

Did someone reset the calendar? It was pretty much the perfect summer’s day in the Dearne Valley today, one of brilliant sunshine and temperatures around twenty-one degrees. Like everyone else I met, I had to keep reminding myself that this was mid-October and mid-autumn - not midsummer!

Old Moor’s Early Birders, perhaps inspired by the summery day ahead, were in fine form this morning. They found: one curlew sandpiper…

Hello again, I was thinking I wouldn't be blogging this eve as I have just got home. I happened to check my phone to find a message from Andrew saying that he had a photo of the sightings for me...Oh, go on then I thought!

So here goes with the sightings from the book today. Thanks Andrew :)

There's quite a list from the bird garden today. Here's what our visitors saw - the pair of coal tits visited again along…

The promise of autumnal gales and heavy rain hung heavily over the Dearne Valley today. Yet the optimists among us know that these things are often overblown and headed out anyway. A wild day is, after all, what autumn is all about and – well, you never know what surprises those winds will bring!

Sure enough, it turned out that the seasoned watchers were right: the rain never really reached the forecast proportions…

After the brisk winds of last week, the Dearne Valley was calm today. There was barely a breath of air and, although the morning was overcast, it was unseasonably mild for October. For anyone visiting the reserves, it was a chance to take stock and to appreciate the spectacular palette of autumnal colour.

Fruits of every hue adorn branches and there are still plenty of flowers in bloom. The blues of the Michaelmas daisies…

Formula One motor racing teams have to consider their ‘tyre strategy’ these days I’m told. The tyres wear out quickly, especially at those speeds. We’ve probably all seen those videos of pit crews changing all four wheels in seconds.

Birds have a similar problem. Not tyres of course but feathers. Yes, feathers wear out; think of the air miles! Like cars, if birds changed all their feathers at…

Hello again. Flying over the Dearne Valley today were four common cranes. That must have been a great sight to see! John Seeviour tweeted that the fab four drifted high over Bolton Village going towards Adwick wetlands  at about 12:45pm. And warden Heather also tweeted her sighting of the cranes. They had just flown southeast over Goldthorpe when she saw them. It's not often that we get to see common cranes in the Dearne…

After all the excitement of yesterday’s wryneck sightings, you might imagine that today was a pretty busy one at Old Moor. And you’d be right! Despite some cold and overcast weather this morning, watchers were up early and out in force!

Sadly, even with all these extra pairs of eyes, the news was that there was no news. This was one mysterious little bird that proved just too elusive. Some kind of jinx I…

Hello again! The big news today is of a wryneck at Old Moor. It was spotted by our regular Tuesday volunteer Amanda Palethorpe at about ten to ten this morning on Green Lane. It’s quite unusual for a wryneck to be this far inland so the chances are that it’s the same bird which was spotted at Adwick recently. I think I’m typing this correctly in that it showed well for a while on the path up to Wath Ings before it went…

The bright and blustery autumnal conditions continued in the Dearne Valley today which made life a bit difficult for some of the smaller waders. The rough count – sorry, ruff count – was twenty-nine birds today and those twenty-five mph gusts of wind caused them a few problems in particular.

Ruff weigh something like 180g. That’s about the same as a small packet of biscuits (any flavour). They forage for…

It was a wild day and the reedbeds of Old Moor were restless. A stiff south-westerly wind surprised many and even turned woodpigeon into grey bullets across the Mere. To the reserve’s raptors however, this was just the advantage that they had been waiting for. These aerial experts used the headwind to confound their prey and provide them with an additional weapon in their hunt for meal.

It was therefore doubly…