Bah - as you can plainly see I have now returned from my wanderings in West Africa and am back on the wetland wonder that is the Humber, that's if you were wondering where I'd swanned of to! I'll be doing a little blog on my most excellent trip to the Gambia in the near future but for now its back to the sunny old Humber!
But a quick stomp around the sands on Sunday and this morning revealed that the wetlands are still delivering the goods even though the temperature was a tad chillier than the 30+ deg I had got used to! At least two wippets (water pipits that is) were feeding around the edges of the newly renovated Townend lagoon on Sunday while two newly arrived twite were in the tree's next to the toilet block this morning. Strange but true but the best place to connect with twite at Blacktoft is again near the toilets!
Winter has certainly creeped in from the east since my departure with lots of fieldfare around the hedges plus a few redwing and a single siskin south.
The harrier roost is starting to blast on all cylinders now with up to 20 marsh harriers and at least two hen harriers coming in late afternoon. The ringtail hen was joined by a superb adult grey male while there is regular merlin and peregrine too. Keep an eye out too for the starlings heading off to roost at Alkborough flats where there was 170,000 last night apparently!
Still a good selection of waders with all this mild weather including 50 black tailed godwits, 8 dunlin, 40 snipe, 4 spotted redshank then at least 3500 golden plover and 1000 lapwing roosting out on the apex mudflats. While we're on the subject of golden plover its been an incredible autumn on the RSPB Humber reserves for this species with a staggering 26,000 counted on Reads Island this weekend. Our network of refuges from Goole to Grimsby have probably held a peak of over 45,000 goldies this autumn, the Humber is absolutely incredible!
Other sightings of note include cetti's warblers, chiffchaff, little egret and stonechat plus off course a nice range of duck and a few pinkfooted geese in with the greylags. Keep a look out too for the beardies as there are still plenty in the reedbed and I feel that if we have a bright sunny morning they may be tempted to erupt.
Anyway that's about it - sorry for the lack of photo's in this blog - not had a chance to start snapping yet!