All the young dudes

It's a great time of year to be out on the reserve.  The ground is a blaze of floral colour, and there are lots of young birds, starting out on a new life. 

Each morning, more fledglings leave their nests, and take their first flights. After a few days, they're pretty confident and the willow trees are full of squeaking tits, finches and warblers. On the water, our pairs of great crested grebes and mute swans have one and two chicks respectively, each now a few weeks old, and hopefully past the biggest risk of becoming someone else's lunch.  Several broods of tufted ducklings and mallard ducklings are on the water too, though it's sometimes difficult to count the number of tufty chicks as these little brown balls of feather are constantly bobbing down beneath the surface to feed - thanks to Chris White for uploading the photo to our Flickr page. Look out for tiny moorhen chicks too if you're here over the weekend - the Tal-y-fan Hide, The LookOut and Coffee Shop are the best vantage points.

We fear, however, that we have lost our brood of  little grebes. There were three chicks, about a fortnight old, but we haven't seen them since last Saturday, though at least one parent bird is still around. Fingers crossed that they're just hiding in a reedbed channel, out of sight.  Better news, however, from the islands in the Deep Lagoon where at least two of the three common sandpiper chicks are growing nicely, best viewed from the Carneddau Hide.

We're starting to see an increase in wader numbers.  Redshanks, for example, have gone from just a couple of birds to around 80 in just a few days, including lots of juveniles, which means they've had a good breeding season somewhere and are now ready to move south for the winter (yes, I did just use that word).  A green sandpiper has been seen daily since Wednesday (24th), usually on the Shallow Lagoon, and a local resident reports an avocet on the estuary on Thursday evening (25th), but we haven't seen it yet today.

A nuthatch was a rare sighting on the reserve, among tits in the trees at the Glan Conwy end of the reserve on Tuesday (23rd), close to where a couple of grey wagtails have been regularly in the Afon Ganol. Easier to see are the bee orchids, which number around 200, and should remain in flower for another 10 days or so. The southern marsh orchids, of which we have counted more than 1000, are coming to the end of their season however.

Better weather means there are more dragonflies and butterflies on the wing: common blues of both families, and broad-bodied chaser are among the sightings this week.  We are hosting a Bumblebee Identification course here on 5 July, organized by our friends at Cofnod, the North Wales Environmental Information Service.  If you'd like to book, and then contribute your sightings to national monitoring schemes, see their website.

Finally, you may wonder why there are diggers, safety barriers and the occasional concrete mixer at the Glan Conwy end of the estuary path. Natural Resources Wales are repairing the sea wall between the Conwy Valley railway and the reserve footpath. It involves digging a large hole, building a new concrete barrier to stop tidal water entering the Afon Ganol, and then replacing the stones.  The work should be complete by 3 July, and the trails will remain open throughout.