It's been a rather grey start to 2017, but in the moments of sunshine, the reserve has looked stunning, as this view across the estuary (by Rob J. Davis) illustrates. As regular readers will know, I do like a bit of rain in the Winter, as we can raise the water levels on the lagoons in readiness for Spring. We have, finally, been able to pump a reasonable amount of water onto the Shallow Lagoon (the one closest to the…

Happy New Year! The Christmas break is a good chance to review the year and to catch up on some reading. There's plenty to be proud of at Conwy in 2016, as you can read in last week's blog.

Two things that I've read this week provide good reasons to spend time discovering nature in North Wales this year.

Firstly, the travel-guide people Lonely Planet have named North Wales as the fourth best place in the…

Happy new year!

The week since Christmas has been blessed with bright, sunny days, encouraging lots of people to get outside and explore the nature reserve. Our recent star birds have all been here: firecrest and water pipit (to 30th December at least), kingfisher (to 31st) and water rails have been heard regularly. A treecreeper has been with a flock of long-tailed tits in recent weeks, a scarce visitor here, and…

We've been back through the RSPB North Wales Facebook page and report our year through the posts that you liked, loved and shared the most.

The year kicked off where December had finished, a wet and windy month. Late in January we went for 24 hours without rain for the first time in 66 days! Storm Gertrude made a mess of the Ynys viewing screen, but our volunteers soon put it back together again, and later in the…

This year at RSPB Conwy, our Schools on Reserve team has gone from small beginnings to finishing on a high after working with nearly 3,000 school children. Michelle Rogers, our Learning Officer is looking for a new intern.

On a cold January morning, Michelle's first task was developing the education team and a volunteer Learning Assistant Intern was soon recruited; along with learning assistant volunteers. Along the…

Birders love lists. Well, most do.

Personally, I keep three: one of all the birds I've ever seen anywhere in the world (though I'm a bit rubbish at keeping that one up-to-date); a list of birds that I've seen in Britain (that doesn't increase very often these days), and a list of the birds I've seen at Conwy nature reserve during the year.

This last one is the most 'active', because I can update…

We've taken advantage of the good weather to crack on with some of our habitat management programme over the last few weeks. You'll see changes in several places around the reserve. We have cut new rides in the reedbed near the boardwalk, giving you new views and the water rails new 'edges' along which to feed. With the help of a group of volunteers from Bangor University, we have also removed most of…

Yay, we've had some rain! The Shallow Lagoon is as low as I can remember (except for the time when we emptied it to refill it with saltwater to tackle the invasive New Zealand Pygmyweed). Not surprisingly, many of the birds have moved onto the Deep Lagoon, where the mudbank close to Benarth Hide has been a popular feeding and roosting area with the lapwings, teal and redshanks. We've only had 2cm so far this week…

Late October is when Autumn starts to meet Winter, but at Conwy, the sunny days continue to provide a Summer feel, especially with chiffchaffs and blackcaps still seen daily, plus common darter dragonflies and red admiral butterflies. A common sandpiper last Friday (21st) was a late summer visitor, although individuals have overwintered farther upriver in previous years.

Our great white egrets are still here, with…

If you're an RSPB member, I am sure you will have read that connecting people, especially young people, with nature is a high priority for the RSPB. But what does this mean, and why is it important?

As nature-lovers, we're all acutely aware that habitats have been shrinking fast: tropical rainforests, temperate grasslands, wetlands that give life to nature and to people. But what about us humans? When I was a…

With the breeding season over, Autumn and Winter are the seasons for reserve management work, and we've been busy in recent weeks undertaking various activities, and haven't had an opportunity to update the blog. And there's a lot to tell you about!

Regular readers and visitors will know that we have had a great white egret on the reserve since mid-July (photograph above by Simon Knight). There was just…

Although the mornings feel autumnal (today was the first morning with a jacket over my t-shirt since June!), afternoons this week have been like mid-summer: warm sunshine that has encouraged the last of the butterflies, bees and dragonflies to take to the wing. Our weekly flying-insect survey recorded comma, speckled wood, common blue, small white and green-veined white on Friday, plus a probable hornet hoverfly, a…

The focus of birding interest on the reserve is often the lagoons, scrub and grassland, but this week's spectacle is in the estuary. We've noticed it each day on the incoming and outgoing tide: many hundreds of birds in a feeding frenzy in the channel closest to the saltmarsh. Black-headed gulls, herring gulls, grey herons and little egrets are all involved, noisily feeding in the water. We think it's because…

Last week I wrote about how we manage the water, aiming to have lower water levels in late Summer and Autumn in order to provide feeding opportunities for migrating shorebirds. This week's birds suggest we got it about right!

Highlight of the Autumn so far was a pectoral sandpiper, the fifth reserve record but the first since 2008. A nice find on Wednesday (31st) by visitors on holiday from Scotland, lots of people…

Each Summer, lots of visitors ask us about the water levels in the lagoons, especially those viewing from the Coffee Shop where the changes are most apparent. Some people suggest that there should be more water in the lagoons, but the birds think otherwise. As wading birds fly south from their short Arctic breeding season, they need invertebrate-rich mud to refuel. They will travel down to west Africa, so have some way…

A great white egret has been here since Thursday (4th), feeding in and roosting around the Shallow Lagoon; we think (based on the markings on its bill) that it's the same bird that was here in late July and then went missing for a week - possibly moving to the RSPB's Langford Lowfields nature reserve in Nottinghamshire. Thanks to Jon Young for the photo.

A juvenile little stint was a great find here on Saturday…

Southbound bird migration hasn't really got into full swing yet, so our attention has focused this week on some of the smaller winged animals that make their home at Conwy. Volunteers Rob and Ruth Morgan conduct a weekly transect walk around the reserve, monitoring butterflies, dragonflies and bumblebees, while Bob Evans spends nights here catching moths, when the rest of us are fast asleep.

Rob and Ruth had a busy…

In June and July, I wrote blogs highlighting some of the flowers that you might expect to see over the coming weeks. They've proved a bit of a hit, so here is the latest instalment, featuring a dozen plants you can see here this month. A good number of the July flowers are still in bloom, so look out for those too, but most of the June flowers have finished for the year.

Doing this has been good for me too. I don…

The week has been book-ended by two rare species. Monday kicked off with a great white egret, only the second reserve record (and the first to plant its feet firmly on reserve mud). The size of a grey heron, it dwarfs the many little egrets feeding in the Shallow Lagoon, as shown in Adrian Foster's excellent photo. The great white is still present today (Sunday 24th). Aside from its size, its bright yellow bill is…

The week started with our reserve Bioblitz, when lots of pairs of eyes, ears and equipment came to scour the reserve to survey the wildlife on the reserve. With almost 1000 records in, the current total stands at 439 different species recorded in one day, of which 56 species hadn't been recorded here previously. Once we have all the records in, we'll do a separate blog-post about the event, but in the meantime, you…

Last month, I wrote a blog featuring some of the more obvious wild flowers at Conwy that you could see if you visit in June. It proved popular, so here's another one with flowers you might see this month. I haven't repeated any of the flowers from the June blog , but some of those will continue to flower throughout the month, particularly common centaury and yellow-wort, while some bee orchids can also be seen…

This is National Insect Week, so we thought we'd show you one of the littler things than run the nature reserve. It's a figwort weevil, and it is one of several invertebrates photographed on the reserve recently by Mal Delamare, and shared on our Flickr page. Close-up photographs shared here are really helpful to us - in fact, Mal's pictures have enabled us to add a couple of new species to the reserve list…

If you're reading this, I'm assuming that you love nature; well, at least that you're interested and enjoy it, whether it's watching from your kitchen window or out on a nature reserve. But can you remember what sparked that interest? Most of us, especially if we got the 'bug' when we were young, had the interest sparked by someone. Someone who simply enjoyed pointing it out, and sharing their knowledge.…

It's been all about the orchids this week, as we conducted our annual count - which takes longer each year as they pop up in new places and in greater numbers! Did you know that the collective noun for orchids is a coterie? No, I didn't either.

We have five species here, and most seem to be doing very well. When I started here in 2008, there was just a single patch of a couple of dozen bee orchids along the…

As Spring drifts into Summer, birds are becoming quieter and more elusive as they are busy feeding their young and starting their feather moult. Now is a great time to look out for other nature around the reserve. Some of the most colourful are the flowers, and June really starts to see them bloom. We have recorded 356 species of flowering plant on the reserve, though there are certain to be some we have missed. You can…