Funny on Sunday I'd just been talking with reception volunteer Barry about how amazing the jousting and leg raking marsh harriers were in front of reception and reminiscing that if we'd been watching the six marshies that were so breathtakingly close and spectacular back in the 1970's and 80's we'd have thought we'd have gone to heaven! But even today these beautiful birds were I thought just as inspiring and incredibly exciting, but when they are joined by a hunting 'ghost' adult grey male hen harrier well everyone in the hide really had one of those very special almost overwhelming bird memories of what most certainly are some very special birds, and it was great to see everyone in First hide who had braved the rain and cold with big smiles on their faces! A real day to remember and you can see why from the pictures below............
The marsh harriers mostly seem to be sub-adult males who are chancing their arm by getting in early before the adults return to site - last year there was some incredible fighting when the adults eventually turned up which could be anytime in the next two or so weeks. Even then as you can see there's some amazing harrier action to be seen up close on site.
And building a nest to attract a female to - enlarge the photo to see better
Plenty of other birds to back up the raptor extravaganza with water pipit showing at Ousefleet, Kingfisher along the ditch in front of the hides, chiffchaff, tree sparrows, little egret, buzzards, and plenty of wildfowl including the pair of whooper swans that were present on Sunday out in the fields
Distant whoopers in the field
But what has also been pretty inspirational has been a superb recent showing of spring waders with this morning on high tide 15 black-tailed godwits including some with quite a bit of summer plumage, 200 dunlin, 3 ruff, 2 oystercatchers and an awesome showing of curlew right in front of the hide at Ousefleet. Add in varying numbers of redshank, snipe and lapwings then its been at times some excellent mid-March birding.
Black-tailed godwits enjoying the worms
And in near full adult plumage
Ruff, dunlin and black-tailed godwit
And a bit of video of mixed waders
Waders, dunlin, oystercatcher and black-tailed godwits with wigeon and shoveler
Dunlin close up
And the curlew were just amazing, they really had rising breeding hormones in them as they burbled and chased each other but then feeding constantly putting on fat for their eastward migration back to Scandinavia. Look closely at the video as the bird takes out the smaller species of worm to eat, I assume these are more often found close to the surface.
Feeding bird video
This bird was fending off an aggressive oystercatcher, I know how it feels after working in Orkney, oystercatchers know how to hold a grudge!
Best of the mammals include a stoat that has been pretty active around the reserve paths and this morning this lovely hare, I just love his face with his tongue sticking out as though he's concentrating!
Birding got even better today when the juvenile white-tailed eagle flew past the office over the Blacktoft village side of the river and down towards Broomfleet! Good job the computers were off due to a tree falling on the office this morning!!! luckily no damage just went through the phone cable!
Just to say that despite the wet and windy this morning there were 8 avocets on Marshland lagoon which then moved up to Ousefleet to feed, spring is determined to be early!