Its a pleasant day at Fairburn Ings, I can see the sun poking through the clouds, and it feels fairly mild outside. I have been watching the treesparrows checking out a nest box in the staff car park. So whilst its still winter, the wildlife is preparing for Spring, it feels like there is light at the end of the wintery tunnel.
As usual at this time of year, the feeders are really busy, it’s almost a full time job to keep our feeders topped up with hundreds of birds visiting them for vital food supplies. From the warmth of our visitor centre you can see a whole host of different garden birds, plus a few which you might not normally see in your own garden such as siskins, treecreepers, bramblings, nuthatches, reed buntings and willow tits. A visitor you may see in your garden is a sparrowhawk, one flew over our feeders on Thursday, the first we normally know about it is when all the birds suddenly fly into the hedges and bushes to try and avoid being the prey of this amazing bird.
We’ve also had sightings of pintails and goosanders on Village Bay, large numbers of goldeneyes on the River Aire, a little egret was seen flying over the visitor car park on Thursday and a water rail was spotted down at Lin Dike on Wednesday morning.