It's been a while since the last Beckingham update, so here we go with all the reserve news from the last few months....
The late summer and early autumn period are often quite quiet for birds at Beckingham, with all our breeding waders having left for the year. However the late autumn and early winter sees the return of our wintering wildfowl and in the last few weeks we have had out first wigeon back on site. There are currently around 130 birds, but if it's anything like last year, numbers should rise to over 1000. Wigeon (along with the summer grazing cattle) are our living lawnmowers, grazing the grass down low to provide ideal conditions for our breeding lapwings come the spring.
Wigeon. Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
A mixture of other wildfowl species winter at Beckingham too, with teal, mallard and shoveler all sharing the wet grassland with the wigeon. An interesting record from early November was a single whooper swan on one of the wet grassland fields. We rarely get mute swans on site, never mind whooper swans, so this record is really good and most welcome.
Golden plover are another feature of the winter landscape at Beckingham and there have been several groups overhead in the last few weeks and a count of around 250 on the ground from the 15th November. Like the wigeon, golden plover numbers should rise to over 1000 by the end of the winter.
Golden plover. Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
Our volunteers have had a busy few weeks too with several projects on the go. Firstly, we had to repair some rotten posts on our cattle corral. This corral is used by our grazier for gathering his animals and we maintain it. We have also been doing some fencing work around the site in order to keep our cattle where we want them. We have finished off laying a hedge that was started last winter and our next task is to lay another hedge at the western end of the site. Hedge laying is a traditional practice that rejuvenates old hedges and thickens them up, originally to keep livestock in check, it is also great for wildlife.