It very much seems that this current mild and soggy winter is suiting many of the reserves wetland birds with some nice numbers of ducks and now a few more waders about site.

Xerox lagoon this morning - full of wigeon and teal 

Certainly this morning the 7 marsh harriers were 'beating' up the wildfowl with 340 wigeon, 460 teal and a great supporting cast of shoveler, gadwall, mallard, tufted duck, shelduck, little grebes and the first goldeneye for a while. Also nice to see that the Whooper swans managed to stay around for the National Swan Survey, but I suspect that there is also another pair knocking about that don't roost on the reserve. 

Whoopers at Marshland

In terms of geese there are still a few pink-footed geese around with 450 on Friday while it was also nice to have 5 white-fronted geese fly over us in the reedbed as we worked. Check out any of the geese as there is always a chance of the white-fronts mixing with the greylags and maybe a chance of something else such as a bean goose or two. 

Pinks

A little bit of a wader revival too with up to 26 black-tailed godwits on Ousefleet and a roost of 21 redshank the other day, while the 100+ curlew seem to be enjoying Ousefleet grazing marsh. The lapwings have been very nice too especially on Friday when they were bathed in moonlight from the full 'Wolf' moon. Also a few snipe around, and fly over golden plovers but it seems most of the Golden plovers are down at our Reads Island reserve with an estimated 25,000 on Monday apparently! 

Lapwings bathed in the moon - yes it was in the night light

Roosting redshank

Black-tailed godwits - from their colour on the breast I get the feeling that they are just starting to wear into there summer plumage

Golden plover and lapwings at at Reads Island - they have been at times spectacular

And this is why golden plover are called golden plover!

The spotted redshank seem to have preferred Alkborough and Whitton Island this year (the lagoon we created on Whitton should be full of food now), but this single bird has wintered down at our Reads Island reserve. Hopefully they'll return for the spring! 

Birds of prey continue to entertain with regular hen harrier into roost, plenty of marsh harriers even during the day, our magnificent tame buzzard, kestrels, sparrowhawks and then off course our lovely barn owl

Buzzard!

Barn owl by Paul Coombes - with thanks

Marsh harrier sitting by the side of Ousefleet

Still a semi-decent collection of passerines too with stonechats, a couple of water pipits at Ousefleet, a few fieldfare, Cettis warblers,  some charming goldcrests and our usual tree sparrows. 

Goldcrest

Treesparrow

Only a short blog today as pretty busy with the reed cutting at the moment and a thousand other jobs. But I'll finish with a nice bit of fungi that's coming up in Horseshoe meadow at the moment.

  

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