July is upon us and the reports of a heatwave appear to have been true! It’s been wall to wall sunshine (plus a few thunderstorms) here this week and there have been plenty of things to see.
There’s been loads of activity over at Lin Dike, so I’ll start there. There’s been wood sandpiper and green sandpiper spotted from the hide; a green sandpiper has also been seen on spoonbill flash and even from Pickup in recent days. Also be on the lookout for redshanks and spotted redshank from Lin Dike and the flashes.
Green sandpiper - Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
Excitingly there have also been a few ruff seen towards the end of last week, though none have been reported since.
Ruff - Mike Richards (rspb-images.com)
A group of black-tailed godwits turned up this weekend, 27 in total were counted yesterday.
Black-tailed godwits - Gordon Langsbury (rspb-images.com)
Over the flashes bittern are still being seen pretty often, and the barn owl is seen from time to time. There have also been a few sightings of a secretive water rail as well as a snipe and lots of different raptors have been seen including marsh harrier, peregrines, buzzard and kestrel.
Snipe - Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
It’s been lovely to walk along the Lin Dike trail this week in the warm sunshine, taking in all the different wildflowers and butterflies. We’ve seen lots of ringlets, meadow browns and gatekeepers – true signs of summer! More and more dragonflies are emerging too, and we’ve had our first emperor dragonflies seen this week so look out for a flash of blue zipping over the ponds.