Wake up, it's Spring!

It is Spring, isn't it? Yesterday I thought it was, walking around the reserve in a t-shirt, a couple of commas being the first butterflies of the year here. Today, I'm not so sure...

Summer migrants have slowly started to arrive this week, with more chiffchaffs and sand martins around, plus our first swallows (Tuesday 3rd), blackcap, white wagtail, willow warbler and common sandpiper (Wednesday 5th). Perhaps the first sedge warbler will rock up over the weekend? Ruff and greenshank on Thursday (5th) are the start of wader passage, and we expect to see the first whimbrels on the estuary in the next 10 days.

Nest-building has begun for a few of our residents, with a pair of long-tailed tits busy constructing a sphere of moss and cobwebs near the Carneddau Hide, and blue tits and house sparrows inspecting the nestboxes.  On the water, up to four great-crested grebes are present, with a little head-shaking from a couple, but no full-on display noted yet (and thanks to Mel Hughes for sharing his great image on our Flickr page). Our first brood of mallard chicks were seen yesterday (Thursday 5th) and several Canada geese are on eggs.

Small numbers of goldeneye, wigeon, shoveler, pochard and gadwall remain, with sporadic display, and the red-breasted mergansers are also showing off their resplendent head-dress. Lots of snipe are still on the islands in the Shallow Lagoon, and a jack snipe was seen again in front of Tal-y-fan Hide last Thursday (29th). 

Both water pipit and a Scandinavian rock pipit have been confirmed here this week, though the latter could easily pass as the former! A few goldcrests have been passing through, but with no sign of any firecrests for more than a week, we presume that their winter visit is over. A merlin has been seen a couple of times, most recently on Wednesday evening (4th), hunting swallows and martins over the lagoon.

A male mandarin duck brought a splash of colour to a damp Good Friday (30th), and was here again on Tuesday (3rd), only the second record for the reserve. A Cetti's warbler has been seen and heard several times, including this morning (Friday 6th) at the Bridge Pond.

We've been getting some great images of a family of otters on our nocturnal trailcam, and we have put together a sequence of some of the recent clips on the screen in the Visitor Centre. Many visitors saw one diving and swimming in front of the Carneddau and Tal-y-fan Hides on Saturday and Sunday, in the middle of the day.  Our invertebrate survey volunteers have started their weekly counts on the reserve, with white-tailed, buff-tailed, early and tree bumblebees recorded on Easter Sunday (1st).