It's been a brilliant few weeks here on the reserve for folk wanting to get their year list of birds off to a great start, as we've played host to a huge variety of different birds on our tiny patch of great habitat. Just the last fortnight has seen daily (although sometimes it has required a lot of patience to see it!) sightings of our long-staying firecrest, two whooper swans on 13 Jan and ten on 15 Jan, a merlin on 13 Jan, 47 dunlin on 15 Jan, two brambling on 19 Jan, a greenshank on 20 Jan, two stonechat from 23 Jan, up to eight each of goldeneye and pochard, a little grebe, lesser redpolls on the feeders, several small flocks of bullfinch, and today a very sharp-eyed visitor spotted a short-eared owl roosting on the edge of the reeds on the Deep Lagoon. Not a bad start to the year!
Unfortunately our bitterns moved off in advance of the cold snap, but in common with the rest of the country we saw a big influx of fieldfares and redwings when the freezing weather started to bite, moving away from the snowy areas of Britain in order to find food. Large numbers of lapwings also moved in, with numbers reaching 178 today. On the evening of 19 Jan, we watched over 70 fieldfares coming in to roost in the trees near Carneddau Hide, whilst huge flocks of starlings swirled and streamed overhead. A real joy to stand and stare. The huge numbers of starlings have left our reedbeds looking pretty tatty, as they've collapsed under the combined weight of 30,000 birds, but they'll recover again quickly in the spring when the new reeds start showing through. The water rails don't seem to mind either - we found a total of 18 on our last complete reserve survey, two more than in December.
Winter is the time when we can get out on the reserve and do the vital conservation work that we need to do to keep all the habitats in prime condition, suitable for providing food and shelter for this multitude of species. We may be a small reserve, but a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep it a great place for nature. An ongoing battle for us is to stop the scrub (mainly bramble and trees) spreading into the grassy areas which are used by feeding and breeding waders, and onto the trails. You may hear us just now (sorry for the noise!) busy brushcutting the bramble to keep it down, and clearing away rank patches of grass which need a bit of a trim to keep them suitable for use by a range of invertebrates, so that hopefully we go into spring in tip-top condition and all our hard work will be worthwhile.