It'll be my last blog post before Christmas but I'll be back the weekend after to give you an update on what I've missed at the reserve. Bird activity on the reserve has been fairly quiet in recent weeks, northern Europe could do with a good blast of freezing weather to send the ducks down here. Wigeon, pintail and goldeneye numbers are fairly low and we have yet to see a smew here on the reserve which is very late indeed. We have however, had a few geese species drop in over the last week such as 50 pink-footed geese seen flying over Lade Pits, a Brent goose on Burrowes Pit, white-fronted geese at ARC and barnacle geese in the area too. Cattle egrets are still being seen in the Boulderwall fields, despite the cows moving home for the winter. Three of the cattle egret 'clean up crew' have been seen at one time. Let's hope they hang around for a little while longer.
Cattle egrets - Dave Clarke
A red-throated diver was seen on New Diggings at the weekend and a Slavonian grebe was seen at ARC. We are also pleased to see that one of our older, resident female marsh harriers - fondly known as 'Flek' has been back on the reserve. She disappeared this spring - clearly to breed elsewhere as we had no mature males on the reserve this year - but has returned to her usual hunting grounds for the winter. Hopefully now we have some breeding age males, she'll stay in the spring to breed.
Flek - our female marsh harrier identifiable by the 2 white patches on the leading edge of each wing - Dave Clarke
I wish you all a wonderful Christmas. Try not to over-indulge this festive season, however I cannot promise that I won't be!
Blackbird with berry - Graham Parry