What with all the rain we had in the past week, and with some maintenance work we carried out on the valves on our water pumping system, we're finally beginning to see the water levels on the Shallow Lagoon rise. An increase of 14cm in six days may not sound all that much, but it's certainly made a big difference to how the lagoon looks, as you can see from the photo above taken from theTal y Fan hide today. There's now plenty of ducks in front of the Coffee Shop, and there was even a little egret on the side of the new island this morning. It finally seems like we have a lagoon again instead of a desert!
It's been an interesting week birdwise, with a real variety of birds returning or passing through. The starling roost continues to delight, but with the change in the clocks they are coming in quite early now, sometimes before 3.30pm depending on the weather. We've had really high tides this weekend, which have brought in more than 500 redshank, a handful of dunlin, a few bar- and black-tailed godwits, the occasional greenshank, and two grey plover have been seen almost daily. Extremely strong winds a week or so ago also brought 750 oystercatchers in to one tiny island on the Deep Lagoon in a jam-packed huddle. Duck numbers have increased greatly in the last few weeks, with hundreds of teal, up to 12 pochard, a couple of goldeneye, several shoveler and up to 9 red-breasted mergansers seen each day. Glyn, one of our Wildlife Guides at the weekend, has been gaining a great track record for spotting water rails from the Tal y Fan hide, so if you've ever struggled to see one of these elusive birds, then come along next Sunday and put Glyn to the test!
The tops of the Carneddau mountains were blanketed with snow this morning, and the small birds have also shown that winter is on its way this week. One lucky visitor saw a firecrest on 6 November near the Tal y Fan Hide. Our Wildlife Guides also spotted a water pipit on their Saturday morning Guided Walk on the same day. Redwings and fieldfares have been passing through daily, small parties of linnet, meadow pipit and siskin are moving through, the bearded tits have put in occasional appearances and up to 8 bullfinch have been spotted in the Wildlife Garden. A grey wagtail has also been seen occasionally, and the kingfisher is back for the winter. The best place to see the Kingfisher is on the Bridge Pond first thing in the morning - it often makes a bright start to the day as we walk round to open the hides in the morning.
And last but not least, a peregrine seems to have chosen us as a favourite hunting ground at the moment, and Jon from the Coffee Shop spotted a female merlin on 3 November.
The reserve may be pretty small, but as the variety of the bird list above shows, size certainly isn't everything!