We had a sprinkling of snow here yesterday at Dungeness, where snow hasn't landed on the reserve for quite a few years! Even just the small bit we had made the reserve look extra special yesterday morning. Our Warden team even had a chance to make a mini snowman!
RSPB Dungeness with snow sprinkling - Louise Kelly
Tractor bonnet snowman - Angela Wood
It's amazing how much the wintry feel and the fact it is the start of advent today has got us all in the mood for Christmas! We have been busy decorating our visitor centre today, instead of a Christmas tree (which sadly with a lot of extra shop stock this year we don't have the room for) two of our visitor centre volunteers have decided to create a Christmas bird table instead!
Our Winter Fair is fast approaching and we've been kindly donated some brilliant prizes for our raffle this year so it's well worth turning up on the 10th December to buy a raffle ticket! We will also be offering free mulled wine and tasters of our delicious chutneys, honey and jams. We've got fantastic gifts in store for your loved ones this Christmas and arts and craft activities happening all day. Please come along and support a charity this Christmas. Click here for more details!
The colder weather is still bringing in our birds! Over 5,000 Great black-backed gulls were recorded on our new islands on Burrowes Pit this week. With a wingspan of 1.7 metres, they are the largest gull in the world! We have also had Caspian and Yellow-legged gulls visit the Pit too. Today we have seen a Black-necked grebe on Burrowes Pit as well as a Spotted redshank! We've now seen male and female Goldeneye on the reserve so not long now before we will see our famous Smew start to arrive!
Great black-backed gull - Graham Parry
We've had an incredible amount of Kingfisher sightings this week! It's well worth popping down to catch a glimpse of these magnificent birds fishing for sticklebacks in the pits.
Kingfisher - Graham Parry