Spring is definitely in the air over at Beckingham. The air is full of displaying lapwing and redshank and skylark and meadow pipit are singing away. The tree sparrow season is now upon us too, with numerous birds calling away from the hedgerows. Now is the time of year when we spend a lot of our time monitoring our breeding birds and we spent a very pleasant morning last week looking at our lapwings out on the wet grassland fields. A pair of oystercatcher are still present and have bred on site for the last couple of years, so fingers crossed for them.
Our breeding wildfowl have all returned too, with mallard, shoveler, gadwall and shelduck all present on the wet grassland fields.
Around 50 wigeon are still present, along with smaller numbers of teal, reminding us that a small bit of winter is still hanging on!
Two good site records of the last few weeks include 2 mistle thrushes on the 13th April and 2 ravens flying over on the 10th, being mobbed rather persistently by carrion crows!