Well its been a bit of a funny old start to January but today it was great to hear from our regulars Tim and Si Jump that they had the locally wintering great-white egret drop into Xerox lagoon for ten minutes. Maybe not the rarity they once were but still an excellent bird to get 2019 off to a great start, and also this morning there was another bird that only a year or two ago would have been a bit of a site rarity and that was a very loud cronking raven at Ousefleet. How times change so quickly!

Here's a couple of nice photo's of the birds courtesy of Tim and Si 

And in the last day or so partly due to yet again low water levels (its getting a bit repetitive isn't it) and some high low tides (that have been pushed up by the weather in Scotland, but as we are on a low tide cycle aren't enough to flood the reserve as we'd like!) there has been some recompense with a few waders using the site, 10 ruff were notable today and there has been over 100 curlew roosting on Ousefleet lagoon, also 13 redshank, a few snipe and 200 lapwings. 

Lapwings on Ousefleet with the Koniks behind 

Curlew on Ousefleet

And a bit of video of the curlews as they flight out to roost

But many of the waders are using the Estuary at the moment around our Whitton and Reads Island reserves with combined counts of 9600 golden plover, 4500 lapwing, 2000 dunlin and at least 28 avocet at Reads. I suspect with Alkborough Flats there are over 10,000 lapwing in the upper estuary and maybe over 700 curlew, add in over 5000 pink-footed geese roosting on Whitton and probably a few more at Reads then you get an understanding of just how important this part of the estuary is! 

Avocet on Reads Island with black-tailed godwit and teal

And I thought I'd play about with some of the curlew images that I took along the estuary - I always wished I could sketch!

This picture made a particularly nice pencil sketch

The pinkfeet have been regularly flying over the reserve while on the lagoons there was just over 200 wigeon alongside the teal, gadwall, shoveler, mallard and shelduck. This isn't too bad really as I was saying to someone this morning, we could be frozen up as would be expected at this time of year! It was almost like a summers day today - well in Orkney anyway.

Duck taking flight today on the reserve (Tim and Si Jump)

And pink-feet flying over

Still a good number of marsh harrier about and plenty of buzzards but no hen harriers, maybe there just isn't any food in the area for them? But at the roost tonight there was merlin again and barn owl with regular sparrowhawk often during the daytime. 

This buzzard seemed a little fed up with this persistent crow

Not too much change on the smaller birds but still a few water pipits around and the odd stonechat, bearded tits are very quiet at the moment making their winter survey difficult but it does seem possible that we have around 250 birds through the site. 

Bearded tit female from one of my surveys last week

Still a few fieldfare clearing up the last berries, good numbers of tree sparrows around the car park and then bullfinch, over 40 skylarks in the field next to the reserve and then the usual common resident species. 

Mammals are usually good value at this time of year on site with the roe deer, a few hares, a chance of stoat or weasel and fox.