It’s just about the time of year for nesting birds and I have become slightly obsessed with a lamppost on the roundabout at beginning of Station Road as I have seen a Great Tit entering with what appeared to be a beak stuffed with nesting material. It has disappeared into the top of the tube twice now and I want one more sighting to be sure it’s nesting there. Birds can have a habit of nesting in places that seem peculiar to us, examples in recent years on RSPB reserves I have been on have included Blue Tits in an old (unused!) outdoor ashtray and a Wren deciding an ideal nesting spot was the underside of the reserve Land Rover! What’s the most unusual place you have seen a nesting bird? Steve and Phil have also been keeping an eye on a Great Spotted Woodpecker who was seen excavating a hole in a tree near to the reserve office.
In practical news this week we have been renovating the set of steps on the Powderham path leading to the viewing platform, they had become worn and water appeared to be gathering at the base so are being re-dug and the wet muddy area replaced with a layer of stones, this work will be completed next week so if you come for a visit over the weekend take a little care around this area.
The lapwing here appear to be doing well with more seemingly sitting each week, we are also currently trying to gather as much information about other waders visiting our reserves so if anybody has any sightings then please feel free to send them through to the Exe Estuary mailbox at ExeEstuary@rspb.org.uk. Sedge and Reed Warblers have now arrived on site with their confusingly similar songs sparking many a debate as to which species each song belongs! Another piece of wildlife news is the Short-Eared Owl being back on the reserve, I finally got to see it when out for a walk with Phil. We had brilliant views as it quartered around the fields between the canal and the motorway bridge last Saturday and more reports came in from earlier this week. Phil has also been lucky enough to see a Common Tern fishing on the lagoon which made me very jealous! They are very elegant looking birds with an attention grabbing feeding habit in which they hover over the water and when a likely target is spotted rise up slightly before performing an aerodynamic dive to hit the unsuspecting fishy prey. Click on the j-peg attachment below for a picture of a Common Tern courtesy of RSPB Images
Any keen moth enthusiasts out there will be pleased to know that Phil and I have begun trapping this year with our first haul consisting of four Hebrew Character and two Common Quaker. Not too bad for a cold and windy night. Hopefully things will start kicking off moth wise in the near future; I may even introduce a moth of the week! I’m interested to see how the species here differ to those I have observed at other reserves around the country.