Unfortunately the reserve is still closed but I suppose there is more positive news that we are getting a little closer towards re-opening in a limited capacity, but only if we can find enough staff and volunteer resource to manage both limited car parking and welcome to the site and carry on with the priority conservation work across all our sites that we manage. Not quite sure when that will be at the moment as we are struggling due to one of our staff recovering from a major operation, but hoping that we can manage it for the end of August/Early September. We also have a slight complication in that the Environment Agency will be carrying out some repair work on the flood bank and this will necessitate access via some of the visitor area for two weeks with heavy machinery. It never quite rains.........
If/When we re-open we will only announce it here on the blog initially, so best to keep an eye out here.
Well its been quite a while since my last blog, in part because our work load always goes up at this time of year and 2020 just seems to have no bounds when it comes to the need to get work done in exceptional circumstances. But then the birds and wildlife carry on like they have for thousands of years, breeding, feeding and migrating southwards.
For once I'll start with the passerines in main because of the very notable willow warbler passage this year, the best I've seen (well heard mainly!) for a long time with every day the constant huet and occasional song of young and adult willow warblers working their way south towards their African wintering grounds. I do wonder if they are the same birds but then when I was a bird ringer back in the good old 1980's we very rarely re-trapped the passage willow warblers, even when we were catching 50+ a day. It really does surprise me that so many pass through a location that is out in the middle of the estuary well away from their main breeding grounds, in stark contrast to garden warbler that is a less than annually recorded migrant here!
Willow warbler
It also seems that everywhere I go I'm finding redstarts, so maybe it shouldn't have come as no surprise that one turned up on the reserve last week and stayed for a few days. They too are less than annual which is rather odd really as we have some lovely habitat for them, maybe its because they hide deep in the willows.
A few stonechats now out on the grazing marsh and another whinchat but at the moment they are scarce due to the lack of south westerly winds.
Whinchat
Yellow wagtails though are building up alongside large numbers of pied wagtails, and a few skylarks, meadow pipits, and reed buntings although many are in moult and so are staying low in the reeds.
Yellow wagtail
Juvenile skylark
Meadow pipit
Still a few late broods of many species though as the weather has generally been favourable, wrens, cettis warblers, reed buntings plus reed and sedge warblers have all benefited as have the tree sparrows.
Juvenile reed bunting
Adult sedge warbler
Waders numbers have been very depressed with only a smattering of birds across the lagoons, its difficult to work out exactly why but possibly the Alkborough effect combined with low levels of food in the lagoons and a marked late harvest meaning surrounding fields are not always providing the food for species such as ruff and lapwing.
Best sighting was a very, very brief and early juvenile curlew sandpiper last week. In fact so brief it flew past me and was never seen again! Otherwise the main assemblage has consisted of black-tailed godwits, a few green sandpipers, ruff and greenshank, a smattering of snipe, lapwing, avocet and redshank and not really that much else. Yesterday there was 5 brief ringed plover and today a little ringed plover, the odd fly over curlew and golden plover and last week there was a single dunlin.
Green sandpipers
Little ringed plover
Greenshank
Juvenile black-tailed godwit
Snipe
Birds of prey are also at relatively low levels with not many marsh harriers left now, most seem to have decided to go and find better hunting grounds with more voles, there is the odd buzzard and kestrel while a sparrowhawk was the first for ages, up to three peregrines have taken up residence on the Ouse pylon where they seem to enjoy picking off any passing innocent.
Kestrel seem to had had a very poor breeding season in this area
Buzzards are now resident on site
As seems the norm now big white birds are the regular focus of the late summer with a few spoonbills from time to time, little egrets and this last week a great-white egret eventually making it over from Alkborough to feed. Only 20 years ago this would have been a notable days birding but not quite now, how times change.
Pardon me! Great white just steps over the mallards!
And a trio of herons
Pleasing to see the moorhens for once having a good breeding season, probably due to the lack of marsh harriers, and also currently plenty of water rails of all ages running along the edges of the reed.
Duck are all in their drab eclipse plumage at the moment but nice to see 300 mallard roosting on site and then going out to feed on the one bit of stubble that is next to the reserve, just a thin strip where one field had its headland cut. Mallard are a duck in trouble especially on the Humber, thirty years ago there would have been 1000+ but now we think 300 is good, I pointed out in the spring how mallard seem to struggle to hatch and then fledge young compared to gadwall, maybe one of the effects of climate change catching up on what we consider a 'common' bird.
Moulting mallards may not be sexy but they are important in conservation terms!
A nice mix of wildlife about at the moment but certainly a shortage of flying insects this year with few sand martins or swallows about, and just the odd swift now which I always give a wave goodbye to, just in case its the last one I see.
But a nice selection of moths about at times
Mouse moth
Large red underwing
And this gatekeeper butterfly, not common around the reserve
Angelica attracting a long horn beetle
I'll blather a bit about our meadow management as Horseshoe meadow looks fantastic at the moment thanks to the recent hay cut. People often seem to think cutting meadows late is good, well cutting late can be good for invertebrates but not always good for wildflowers. Late cutting promotes the courser plants and often smothers the more delicate ones, we mowed Horseshoe meadow in mid July and it looked a real picture of beauty at the time, but now its having a second spring as many of the flowers have a second chance and this seems to have been very good for the local common blue butterflies. If we had left it there was a strong possibility that plant diversity would have declined next year, so please unless there is a certain plant, bird or insect species you are managing for cut your meadows or grassland too late
It feels like a second spring
take a closer look, rich in herbs
And flowers like this hawkbit
And ragged robin
Field scabious (this was on the edge but the infield plants are now beginning to flower again
Common blues have been everywhere on fine days across the meadow
And for those of you who don't think grazing can be good for wildflowers take a close look at these pasture meadows in the Yorkshire Wolds I came across recently, really superb and full of small scabious, harebells and so much more lovely wild flowers and insects. Species like small scabious need grazing to do as well as this, one method of management does not fit all!
And how about our bird friendly mix, well I have to admit I was about to order a recovery seed mix for this in the dry spring as so little had grown and the crows had hammered anything that had grown! But I was advised to give it a bit longer and of course then we got a little rain, the result being one of the best crops for a while with a great mix of bird food including masses of fodder radish, millet, quinoa, kale, triticale, and barley with just a bit of sunflower. (btw a recovery mix is a winter seed mix that you sow when your spring crop of bird freindly food has failed). Sometimes a little patience is what is required!
This unharvested margin of wheat (left) will also provide plenty of food for the finches and buntings
Sometimes working in conservation you have to learn how to provide advice for free when asked in order to get results in the wider landscape, this spring I was contacted by a business that owns a large area of farmland and was asked which supplier did I use to get our bird friendly seed from, I was then asked to provide a bit of advice towards their Countryside Stewardship options which I spent a day and a half doing in lockdown and sent it to them. So imagine how pleased I was to see three one hectare plots of tree sparrow and corn bunting seed mix near to home in North Lincs, and that is only part of what had been proposed across the farm! Hopefully there will be nectar mixes, lapwing plots, grass margins and bird friendly food within the arable areas showing what can be achieved through friendship and a desire change the status quo of arable farming. A great credit to them for doing it and making a difference.
A bit of basic bird cover mix on a less than bird friendly farm, but it all counts..............
Other areas of the farm have been interesting with the field beans (Note I got it right Andrew!) also recovering a little from drought stress and crows eating the seed beans, but although it will never be a good crop it does give a nice insight into what could be done within farming to help our farmland birds. Field beans fix nitrogen into the soil and are often used as a break crop on rotations. The beans often go to the middle east for food where they make homous with them among other things. Unfortunately the way they are grown requires some pesticides for a commercial crop, but wouldn't low input (no use of insecticides) field beans be a great stewardship crop and and alternative to bird friendly food, a half hectare or maybe a few hectares would provide some great insect food for meadow pipits, yellow wagtails, breeding reed buntings etc, and in some years the beans could be harvested or otherwise it could be used as an alternative to stubble or just to fix nitrogen and improve the soil.
Reed bunting in the beans
And there really has been a very distinct change in the local landscape farming this year with some field operations that would have been kicked right out of the door only a few years ago, in the spring I put up a picture of sheep grazing stubble that had been left to regrow, using their dung to fertilise for future crops. Some of the fields even haven't been sprayed off yet with glyphosate, what a great skylark nesting area this must have been. But then take a look at this which is almost in the same area, large fields of phacelia, a pretty good late source of nectar for late bees and butterflies. There is no doubt times are a changing but not sure if its always good or bad, the jury is very much out on the hundreds of acres of oats next to the reserve that seem to be very high input with pesticides and lack of density for nesting yellow wagtails, but it is changing. Now really is the time to change things for the better in Agricultural policy and grants.
And to finish on I'll leave you with a rain themed video! Look what happened the other evening as a rain shower came in across Singleton lagoon, you could watch it inch by inch but the birds certainly didn't seem to like it for some reason!
Love the video Pete. Singleton in the rain!