Its chilly here at Fairburn today, we had a little flurry of snow earlier, but nothing significant. Its just a bit grey now, but a few people have been out to see the wildlife on the reserve.
We’ve had siskins on our feeders again, a few visitors have posted photos of them on our Facebook and Twitter pages. As well as the siskins we’ve had all the usual suspects of blue tits, great tits, coal tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, blackbirds, a few robins, lots of tree sparrows, dunnocks, nuthatches, reed buntings, song thrushes, bull finches, long tailed tits and the endangered willow tit. The feeders can easily be watched from the visitor centre and during the cold weather we’ve had lots of visitors sitting in the warmth and watching all these birds.
Those who’ve been brave enough to venture outside have seen wading birds like curlews, lapwings and oystercatchers, these are usually down on Spoonbill Flash, visible from Lin Dike hide. Also on Spoonbill flash we’ve had tufted ducks, pochards, shovelers, wigeons, teals, a goldeneye and a great crested grebe. Some of these ducks have also been seen on Main Bay.
A bird often overlooked (including in our recent sightings blog) is the coot, we have a good population of them here, they are such characters and at this time of year the males are so territorial they are often chasing other coots out of their patch. Have you ever looked closely at a coots feet? The image in this blog, taken by one of our volunteer rangers, Ginny Sibley, shows their oversized, grey feet. They aren’t webbed like you might expect, instead their feet have lobed flaps of skin which give then traction in the water, but grip on land. Make sure you have a look at them next time you see a coot out of the water.
I managed to get out on the reserve for a walk at lunchtime and saw a sparrowhawk on the top of the Riverbank trail and a great spotted woodpecker just by the visitor centre feeders, not bad when I didn’t take any binoculars out.