The next few weeks are very busy if you're a bird, animal or insect. The explosion of food that comes with warm weather mean that you have to find a mate, and a home, and plenty of food to bring up your young. We have seen lots of our resident birds, such as blackbirds and blue tits, carrying nest material, and over the last fortnight, the summer migrants have arrived, loudly marking the territories that they consider to have the right ingredients to raise a family. The RSPB provides the home, they have to do the rest themselves.
This week has seen good numbers of sedge warblers arrive, and the first couple of reed warblers, so the sounds of Africa are growing louder in the reeds. Several lesser whitethroats are belting out their machine-gun rattle on bramble bushes, with the first common whitethroats here since yesterday (18th). The migrants that arrived a few weeks ago, such as chiffchaff, blackcap and willow warblers, may already have found a mate and be starting to build nests, so they've gone a bit quieter.
Out on the water, the first mallard ducklings and Canada goslings are afloat, while mute swans and great crested grebes are here, but yet to show any signs of nesting. Plenty of time yet though. Our weekly monitoring of breeding birds also found four lapwing nests, and there is a coot nesting right in front of The LookOut. Our water levels are high after the winter rain, so there are fewer places for migrant waders to drop in, but we had four common sandpipers this morning, little ringed plover on several days this week, greenshank, a couple of black-tailed godwits, and one or two whimbrels have been feeding on the estuary.
A couple of visitors reported that Mother Stoat was carrying each young kit, a tiny ball of pink skin, the length of the estuary track one evening this week; they often move between dens while the kits are small, to reduce the risk of detection by predators. In another month, the young will start to explore above ground. Another visitor spotted a water shrew, not something we get to see often even though we know they're here.
The warm sunny days have brought out the butterflies, with green-veined white, speckled wood, orange-tip, small tortoiseshell and peacock all on the wing. And the cowslips are in a fantastic display around the Coffee Shop.
Passage migrants this week include a female redstart today (19th), several wheatears (six today), white wagtails daily (peak count 14 on 17th), and 10 greylag geese dropped in on Wednesday (16th). Bird of the week was a cuckoo, perched on one of the viewing screens on Monday (14th). Sadly, we usually only see a handful of these icons of spring each year, and they are rare in the lowlands of North Wales now.
So, with 10 days of April to go, all of our regular summer visitors have been reported, with the exception of swift and garden warbler. The next few weeks are all-action for wildlife as everything that buzzes, tweets, flaps or crawls is busy with the breeding season. Pop down and see how they're getting on.
Julian HughesSite Manager, Conwy