What could be better than an early Christmas present in the form of some fantastic birds and wildlife which is exactly what I got this morning when I peered through the gloom at what I thought was a cormorant diving for fish on Xerox lagoon. 

As you can hopefully see from this short video it was in fact an otter busily fishing for its breakfast! (reminder - must go for eyes testing!)

Its been pretty good for mammals recently with the roe deer putting on a good show and the weasel about again, add in fox and the odd hare and of course otter then if you have been good this year then you may get some memorable mammalian sightings. I'm not sure why the otters have been so regular on the reserve this year as we don't really have lots of fish in the pools, they must be eating sticklebacks, chub, eel and the occasional dab but I wouldn't really call a stickleback a meal!

The Lochness monster! 

Roe deer on Xerox

And after yesterdays wet and miserable day it seemed like the birds had perked up this morning to put on a nice show right across all of the hides on site with best birds being a showy water pipit on Townend, green sandpiper, little egret, and off course the marsh harriers.

With each day this little egret feeding on First lagoon seems to get more and more of its breeding finery and getting a bit of blue on the bill

Plenty of wildfowl on the lagoons with about 400 teal, and then a mix of shoveler, gadwall, mallard, and wigeon, while still a few parties of pink footed geese passing overhead. 

Pinks from Saturday

A few waders included lapwings, plenty of snipe, the odd redshank and the green sandpiper on Xerox, last night 83 curlew flew down river towards their roost site out in the estuary.

Snipe on Singleton this morning

Yesterday evening the harrier roost went up to about 24 marsh harriers while there is also regular buzzard and sparrowhawk with on some nights up to two merlin present. Good to see this female marsh harrier yesterday morning in the rain at Ousefeet feeding on what looks like a few small food items very possible worms, birds of prey often have to eat what they can get in the winter!

Marsh harrier on Ousefleet - photo and video

Nice to see many of the smaller birds busy this morning with water pipit, plenty of fieldfare, blackbirds and the odd song thrush, the songies are often difficult to photograph in winter here on the Sands so I was pleased this one decided to pose for me this morning.

Water pipit on Townend - photo and video

I've also been pretty frustrated with some of my bullfinch photo's recently as it always seemed like when I got great views of them the light was pants, but this morning I got my second Christmas present when one of the males from a pair decided to be nice to me for once.

Bullfinch - they are such messy eaters you can see the remains of the buds its just eaten on its bill

It was also notable this morning that the tree sparrows were checking out the nestboxes along with the blue and great tits who were at one box all scrapping beak to beak over what must have been a very des-res.

Sometimes common birds can give some really lovely simple pictures like this tree spuggie this morning.

And the fungi still entertain thanks to the wet and mild weather 

While on Horseshoe meadow I was surprised to see this lone field scabious flower shining out from the green carpet

Following on from the last blogs fantastic moon corona its seems like the moon has had plenty of beauty to give recently with on Saturday night this 'super' moon rising above the Yorkshire wolds and lighting up the night as if it were day, there is so much of beauty to look at here on the Sands.

 

Have a tattyflarious Christmas!