Mud, mud, glorious mud!

Okay, so perhaps the digger wasn't meant to get quite so stuck in to the challenge of creating some new habitat in the dried-up lagoon.  But we soon dug him out and this work has now been completed.  Now all we need is some proper rain to turn the hillocks of mud into proper islands (though a female wheatear was happy to parade along the top this morning, unbothered by the lack of water).  Before the rain comes we will be spraying the evil weed New Zealand Pygmyweed (Crassula helmsii) that we've found in the lagoon.  If we don't try to arrest its growth, it will eventually take over the lagoon and reduce the muddy feeding areas for waders, so we apologise in advance that Sarah will be out on the shallow lagoon for brief periods over the next few weeks, and this will cause some temporary disturbance.

Back to the birds.  The wood sandpiper that's been present since Sunday is still here, though a common sandpiper wasn't giving it much chance to settle.  The little stints and curlew sandpipers from the weekend remained until Wednesday (8th), but there was no sign today.  Several black-tailed godwits have been feeding busily in front of the boardwalk viewpoint this afternoon, along with increasing numbers of teal, while the wigeon count increased to 13 overnight.  Greenshank, dunlin and ringed plovers were also seen earlier in the week.

Wednesday brought us some good news about our bearded tits.  In the morning, an adult-plumage pair showed well from Benarth Hide, at one point even perching on top of the viewing screen!  These could have been the parents to this summer's fledglings, which hadn't been seen here since early June, but they might equally well have been the youngsters, which should by now have moulted into adult plumage.  We couldn't be sure, but a visitor that afternoon reported two adult males.  Since we know the juveniles were a male and a female, we suspect this means that our parent birds and the two juveniles are still here - hurrah!

Passage migration has been excellent this week, with redstart on Tuesday (7th), whitethroat on Wednesday (8th) and lesser whitethroat yesterday (9th), and chiffchaffs still here today.  House martins and swallows continue to pass south, with the last swift (perhaps of the year) seen on Monday.  The warm days this week have resulted in speckled woods, common blues and small whites on the wing, and there are still plenty of bumblebees around on the bird's foot trefoil, which is rapidly becoming a year-round feature!