We’ve had a great Easter weekend with the sun finally shining, although it still feels pretty chilly and our visitors had to wrap up warm.
There have been further sightings of chiffchaffs and also song thrushes on the reserve, making it feel more like spring, and a sighting of a butterfly possibly a small heath on Sunday. We still have some winter visitors about though such as flocks of brambling and siskins.
The visitor centre and nature garden feeders have been full of various finches and tits, sparrows, nuthatches, reed buntings and red polls. We’ve also had both green and great spotted woodpeckers seen elsewhere on the reserve. Waxwings were spotted in the village and Cut area and 30+ linnets were seen over Newfield way.
There have been plenty of bird of prey sightings, including a merlin, red kites and a number of buzzards displaying. There have also been two sightings of a barn owl by Newton Farm.
Over at Hickson’s there has been snipe, a jack snipe, a little egret, redshank and a female smew, whilst at Pick-up there has been a water rail, little grebe, oystercatchers and lapwings. We have had a couple of more unusual gulls spotted; a Caspian gull at the flashes and a Mediterranean gull on main bay.
There have been a few sightings of roe deer on the reserve and some hares on nearby fields. Julie pointed out a big group of hares on our way back from the reserve last week in one of the fields, no boxing though!
We’ve got plenty of fun stuff to do over the Easter holidays here such as a bird song quiz trail, a stop and listen discovery trail, moth and minibeast events, heron walks and some fab natural musical instruments in the play area. What will you get involved in? For more information take a look at our website http://www.rspb.org.uk/fairburnings/