Its certainly been an amazing last few days here on the reserve in terms of the beautiful spring weather but its also been an exciting time for the birds and wildlife. March is certainly one of my favourite months as it can bring so much diversity and also a mix of both winter and summer birds.
Last Friday though my 'highlight of the week' was the discovery of a large colony of scarlet elf cup fungi as I was having a look at just what the Koniks have been doing to some of the willow scrub. One of my favourite fungi on the reserve this species particularly likes the weather often making its first appearance in late February and March, its one of the only colourful fungi we seem to get on site.
Bird wise there has been some notable returns to site with the years first avocets (slightly later than usual) building up to a peak of 11 birds and last weekend there were also 2 bitterns seen. There should be a good chance of a bit of booming starting although next week the weather looks a little uncertain and with the high tides we may end up getting a big splash of water again, please check as from Tuesday for any updates to see if we have had to close.
Avocets at Ousefleet
Its certainly been a very memorable week for the waders with 11 species featuring and some excellent views of many of them in front of both Ousefleet and Xerox hides, its not often we get quite as spectacular showing of waders at this time of year and although a little subdued today due to the hard frost the weather is set to be milder and a little wetter into next week so hopefully the waderfest will continue.
The fantastic list as follows black-tailed godwit 180, Curlew 130, ruff 38, spotted redshank 4, oystercatcher 2, snipe 11, dunlin 53, redshank 29, many lapwings including one or two displaying and nest scraping, avocet 11, golden plover 5.
Snipe have such great camouflage
Black tailed godwits
roosting dunlin
Redshank
Ruff and black-tailed godwits
Pair bonding oystercatchers (Tim and Si Jump)
And here's a bit of a video I took of one of the oystercatchers, interesting to see that they wash some of the dirtier worms in water before eating, are they the only waders that bother?
And a nice bit of lapwing nest scraping and building in front of Ousefleet hide
Curlew (Tim and Si Jump)
Duck numbers although declining slightly are still pretty good considering the mild weather, most notable has been the northward passage of whooper swans back to their Icelandic breeding grounds, at least 7 roosted overnight mid week on Marshland while yesterday several herds flew over. These were joined by a few skeins of pink-footed geese also going north but very high this year so difficult to pick up.
Whoopers going North
Plenty of wigeon and teal still about as well as mallard, gadwall and shoveler, I also had 8 pintail on the river on Wednesday, its been a funny winter for this species they have steadfastly roosted on the river rather than on the lagoons, mind you they do like their potato's and there's no shortage of them left in the flooded fields this winter. Its been nice to see a few diving duck around too with some very obliging goldeneye, a few pochard and plenty of tufted ducks in with the coot and little grebes
A nice party of mostly male mallards - an often overlooked duck
Male goldeneye, the light reveals his true colours - a green head!
Gadwall trying to steal a coots food
Male pochard
Resplendent shoveler
Juvenile mute swans
Tufted ducks
Interesting too to find a reference in a document entitled The Humber wildfowl refuge- a review of the ornithological data from the annual reports, (by GP Catley) I had squirrelled away an that had an interesting summary for barnacle geese out at Whitton, - it stated that in 1991 - 92 winter there was a flock of up to 84 that wintered 8 of which had been ringed in Svarlbard. With much larger numbers now surely there must be a small proportion of the wintering/passage population on the Humber which are wild?
Birds of prey as most of the winter have put on a great display with marsh harriers now getting very territorial and often chasing the buzzards, the buzzards are still on occasion showing superbly while there has been peregrine, another red kite, sparrowhawk, kestrel and then in the late afternoons the odd barn owl.
A few marsh harrier photo's
Looking over the duck!
And hunting in the morning light
And not to be outdone, the buzzard paid us a visit near Ousefleet hide
Marsh harriers chasing of a buzzard
Last Friday in the wet there was quite a few blackbirds grounded with many pulling quite a few big worms from the ground, we've also had good numbers of fieldfares in the arable next to the reserve, plenty of tree sparrows now inspecting all the boxes, some nice views of singing cettis warblers, plenty of reed buntings and the odd stonechat. Can't be long before the first chiffchaffs arrive but maybe I suspect after next weeks gales.
Reed bunting
Male stonechat
With such an early spring on the cards the team have been going all out to finish off the last bits of reserve management that we usually have plenty of time for, a last bit of willow coppicing, reedbed management, seed bed preparation for a nectar mix crop for insects and trying to sort out the electric fencing for the koniks before the high tides. There's also been a bit of frantic raft building for nesting waterbirds, hopefully we'll launch them in a couple of weeks. There's always plenty to do on a working reserve operation that covers 1400ha of land and has sites nearly 50 miles apart and a few in between!
Reed cutting with an 8 ton mini digger to create edge in a bit of freshwater reedbed.
And finally a few interesting sightings as I've been working recently, this leech sp. was in one of our ditches in a freshwater area, and there was quite a bit of frogspawn too.
You can see the moth at the top end
Frogspawn
Good to see a few rays of spring sunshine as the coltsfoot appears.
Quick update and hopefully do a full blog later today after a meeting, Although all the paths are flooded to above wellington height you can still access Ousefleet hide via the bottom of the flood bank as instructed by the sign at the gate. The waders are pretty amazing at the moment with ruff, spotted redshank, redshank, curlew, dunlin, black-tailed godwit, lapwing, snipe avocet often showing superbly slap bang in front of the hide. We will see what tonight's tide does but expect it to be like this for a couple of days possibly more. I'll update as and when.
All paths to hides are now flooded apart from to Ousefleet along the bottom of the bank. Reserve will probably be closed for at least two days with pending big tides.
Very big tide this morning, still flooding, I would advise against visiting until I can fully update. Pete
Today we had a complaint about the work team digging out spear thistles along the flood bank. So let me explain just why......
Spear thistle are a beautiful plant and is very important for insects, we have thousands of them across the reserve, most of which we leave to flower.
However, the section of the flood bank that runs parallel to the reserve towards Ousefleet hide has in recent years become full of thistle and subsequently no one wants the hay. So what I hear you ask let it go rough, well as a flood bank we cannot let it become rough and rank as it will weaken the bank protection that the grass gives.
The alternative to haying is for the EA bank team to cut it regularly to keep it short and the grass sward tight (take a look at the banks in Reedness and Whitgift) something we don't want to see as the bank provides great hunting in the summer and winter for barn owls and passerines as well as a great insect refuge. So what do we do? Well if we can get it back to a condition where it is hayed by removing the infestation of spear thistle and gradually reducing the creeping thistle through nutrient removal through haying then we can promote wild flowers such as the cow slips, and all the other 70 species we have in Horseshoe meadow through strewing green hay.
We are very much at a point where we need to ensure that this bank is not cut 2 - 3 times in the summer and this does necessitate getting on top of the spear thistle problem for starters and getting back to haying it regularly.
And there you have it, but just to finally add that spear thistle is classed as an agricultural problem weed and as some of the bank isn't ours the north facing bank could be legally sprayed to stop it spreading into the arable fields.......
I know a fantastic relic bank along the Humber full of wild flowers including pyramidal and bee orchids - they don't need to be full of thistles!
1st bittern grunting tonight and lots of squealing water rails.