Volunteer wildlife guide (and e-news editor), Paul Martin, has been in the Benarth Hide this afternoon and has had good views of two juvenile bearded tits.  The brood that hatched here last month hasn't been seen for weeks, so this is great news.  No sign of the adults, so is there another nesting attempt somewhere in the reeds?

The other highlight of the week is a marsh tit seen regularly on the Wildlife Garden feeders…

Another week with no rain and the lagoons are shrinking fast, but at least one pair of birds has done well out of the falling water levels. For the last couple of years a pair of great crested grebes have attempted to nest on the lagoons, but each year the nest has ended up being washed out by heavy rainfall so no eggs hatched. No danger of that this year, so it was with real pleasure that we saw the first grebe chick…

Having been away on St Kilda seabird monitoring for the last 3 weeks, I returned to find that someone's stolen the Shallow Lagoon in my absence! The water levels are continuing to drop, and with no water anywhere to pump in after what seems like endless dry weeks, the water in front of the Coffee Shop has disappeared and the Shallow Lagoon has become more puddle than lagoon. This doesn't seem to have held the lapwings…

"What's happened to your water?" is the question I've been asked most frequently this week.  Well, I'm afraid the rain over the last few days has done little to replenish levels either in the lagoons or on the Afon Ganol, the river that runs adjacent to the reserve.  And if it doesn't rain, our lagoons don't fill.  And all this lovely sunshine evaporates the lagoons quickly, especially when…

Sarah's on holiday (something to do with crawling around the clifftops to count Manx shearwaters on a small island in the North Atlantic, I think) and Julian's been ill, so hopefully normal service is being resumed in time for the weekend.

This week's big news is that the two bearded tits have been seen daily.  Usually from the coffee shop, and sightings are more frequent some days than others (they've been…

Or has he ever been away? 

And is Mrs Bearded Tit sitting tightly in the reedbed somewhere.  It's the great thing about nature, isn't it?  We don't know the answers. 

But with the open eyes and ears of visitors and volunteers, perhaps all will be revealed over the coming days and weeks.  The male beardie has been spotted in the reeds to the right of the coffee shop a couple of times today, though it goes missing…

We haven't seen the black redstart again since last weekend, though we have had a couple of reports of birds at the start of the week - our thanks to Richard Bryant who found this smart male on one of the picnic tables last weekend and has sent us this cracking photo.  Up to five wheatears and a whimbrel were here at the start of the week, but there have been few passage waders since.

Migration has, inevitably, slowed…

...but they don't stick around

The week started with great views of a wood sandpiper, a species that is scarce in North Wales but becoming annual at RSPB Conwy.  Showing well in front of the coffee shop and the boardwalk, on Monday evening (10th), it started calling, displaying and hovering over the boardwalk screen - but we've not seen it since Tuesday evening. 

Later in the week (14th), we found a winter-plumage…

Although we're well into the breeding season now, with the first mallard ducklings and Canada Goose goslings appearing a fortnight or so ago, the spring migrants are still on their way past. The occasional wheatear and white wagtail are still seen on the salt marsh, small parties (including a group of around 50 on 8 May) of summer plumage dunlin are a daily sight on the estuary, we still see the occasional whimbrel, and…

Plenty of summer migrants now, with the most impressive being the dozens of swifts with hundreds of swallows and house martins feeding low over the lagoons the last couple of days.  A grasshopper warbler was seen and a Cetti's warbler was heard on the Ganol trail yesterday (29th), the latter still a considerable rarity on the North Wales mainland.  Several whitethroats and a couple of lesser whitethroats are singing…

This is the view that everyone's wanted to have at Conwy over the last 24 hours - but it's been the fortunate few who've managed to see bearded tit this well.  Our thanks to photographer Keith Williams for letting us use his photos of our latest addition to the reserve list (species number 232 to be precise).

We were pretty excited to have one bearded tit, but then we realised that he'd brought a mate too…

A pair of bearded tits found this afternoon by Alex, one of our volunteers.  Showing occasionally from Benarth Hide, which will remain open later than usual this evening (though the best views are through the adjacent viewing screen).  Photos to follow...

Jon from the coffee shop has just seen our first swift of the year, bombing along above the estuary track - quite possibly the first in North Wales.  It's been a busy morning here with a yellow wagtail among 70 white wagtails on the saltmarsh, five wheatears, five common sandpipers and four black-tailed godwits.  We haven't seen the colour-ringed godwit for a couple of days, but we had an email yesterday to confirm…

This week finally saw migration get going: sedge warbler (Sat 17th) and lesser whitethroat (17th) were new in this week, and the willow warblers and blackcaps finally started to arrive in number.  Another yellow wagtail (today, 18th) was on the saltmarsh with a wheatear, and the prize for most colourful bird of the week must go to the smart male redstart, found by our optics guru Chris (on his day off, 16th).  White wagtails…

This was the highlight of the week, well, for a lot of North Wales birders anyway.  It's a black duck, a North American species, that was found from the reserve on the estuary on Wednesday (7th) by former Conwy site manager, Alan Davies.  OK, it looks a lot like a mallard and it's one you definitely need a good field guide to be certain of the identification.  It remained until the 8th, though was often distant because…

Great excitement yesterday morning (Saturday 27th) as all the waterbirds lifted as one - "Osprey" shouted volunteer Wildlife Guide Glyn.  The behaviour of all the other birds suggested an osprey, but he couldn't see one.  Elsewhere on the reserve, however, several visitors watched it drift slowly north.  An osprey had also been seen heading towards the reserve on Friday (26th) - the same one?

This morning…