With all the nice weather recently there has been renewed usage of the reserve and the arrival of a few of the wetland birds that tend to leave us for the winter, and its been very nice to welcome them back and have at last a bit more variety on site again even though the nice weather may yet prove to be another false spring!
No doubt that the barn owls have been superb on an evening particularly from first hide down to Singleton, often coming within just a few meters of the hides giving many people ultra close up views.
You can really see how this bird is using the Alula (also called the bxstxrd wing, I've censored the word just in case any youngsters are reading!) wing to adjust its speed for landing, its the small feather sticking out at the top in the middle of the wing
Although the hen harriers can't be guaranteed as they seem to be playing 'cat and mouse' and I suspect roosting with the majority of the marsh harriers out on Whitton Island, you will still get excellent views of the few marsh harriers that have stayed faithful to the Blacktoft reedbed, also resident buzzards, and a chance of sparrowhawk, kestrel, and merlin with at least one on Saturday evening.
Marsh harrier
Also a run of nice birds over the last few days with yet another sighting of the great-white egret (Thursday), two little egrets, two water pipits, and green sandpiper which was showing well at Ousefleet today. While today the Wardening team put up a jack snipe as they were checking a fenceline - so make sure you check those snipe carefully.
Green sandpiper - Ousefleet
Little egret - they are now getting their breeding plumage
On the wader front there has regular redshank, snipe and lapwing along with the usual fly through curlew here at Blacktoft although there has been some new significant arrivals down at Reads Island over the weekend - more of that later.
Lapwings on Marshland this morning looking very dapper with their long crests
Duck are currently in immaculate plumage and with the arrival of the pochard back onto site there seems to be a renewed buzz across the lagoons with good numbers of wigeon, mallard, and shoveler plus quarrelsome shelducks, a few gadwall and teal and then a few more little grebe and the first coot back on site! Just a few pink-footed geese left in this part of the estuary now although there are 1000+ down at Reads Island.
A few smart looking duck
Female pochard
A male shaking of the water - enlarge to appreciate this photo better
Male in repose
Male and female wigeon - they had just been mating
A male wigeon - such a lovely duck
Male mallard with his curly tail
Male and female shoveler
Shelducks
Plenty of small birds singing now on a morning including robins, cettis warblers, skylarks and song thrushes, although there is a paucity of winter thrushes around maybe a reflection on how good the weather is. Still a chance of stonechat and water pipit and notable that the numbers of reed buntings are increasing maybe indicating that their SW - NW passage has started. A few tree sparrows, chaffinch and greenfinch are around the feeders and a sudden appearance of a few linnets around the car park, listen out for twite as they often pass through at this time of year.
Female reed bunting
Good to find this betony (new species for the field) plant in Horseshoe meadow on Thursday as I weeded out a few spear thistle and ragwort plants and the first blooms of spring in the form of dandelion and germander speedwell. Never underestimate the humble dandelion as a meadow flower, when I was in Siberia last summer they were really well liked by many of the butterflies including the fritilleries.
Betony (a fine flowering plant in summer - its the one with the crinkly leaves) and fungi
Dandelion and germander speedwell
Also good to find plenty of worms in the soil giving a good indication why the snipe were feeding in it recently.
And did you know that there is the right and wrong sorts of mud for wading birds - not all mud is equal along the Humber! Good mud with plenty of food in it is quite scarce, it needs to be soft but also stable (i.e not be continually washed away and then deposited), have tide over it to bring the nutrients for the invertebrates and it often has to be of the right salinity to support estuarine invertebrates. Mudflats also change over time, they can often be good, then become poor for inverts but then with changing cycles renew their vigour, this really becomes important when you are trying to protect the SSSI from development or people pressures - the main thing is estuaries change but they do not disappear and should never be assumed to be no good for birds.
Waders at Reads Island at the weekend
And so down to Reads Island where at the weekend there was yet again a fantastic aggregation of 10,000 wildfowl and waders including a sudden jump in numbers of avocet to an impressive 235! As the tide came in and the birds became more unsettled there was some awesome sights of big flocks of birds, also great to see the first two ringed plover of the year and four newly arrived oystercatchers. At the moment there does seem to be some good mud forming around Reads Island for the waterbirds.
Ringed plover with curlew and lapwing
Also good to see large numbers of golden plover and lapwing, feeding curlew and a few black tailed godwits just starting to gain their summer plumage.
And also these avocets - just some bigger flock with black-tailed godwits and redshank
Bar-tailed godwits have been notable by their absence around many parts of the estuary this year, they are more reliant on food like ragworms so I suspect need soft mud as you can probably see. So nice to see at least 5 bar-tails feeding on the mudflats (never a common bird in this part of the estuary), this bird is colour flagged and was ringed in Norway, hopefully more details will follow although the code on the tag was very badly worn.
Norwegian ringed bar-tailed godwit, black-tailed godwits and avocets
And a good example of how bar-tailed godwits feed deep in the mud
As you can see this redshank was up to the armpits in mud giving a good example of what is needed to help sustain our waders
All these sign reminded me of a of a book which was at my mam and dads by CF Tunnicliffe on birds of estuary which I had a look at when I visited on Sunday, even from the 1950's the drawings really evoke the feeling of the estuary.
We recently gave some donated books to a school near to Reads Island and the feedback was that they loved them, nothing a simple as a book to fire the imagination. They are often sadly lost in this modern era of computers but I still think they give something very different and inspiring.