The bank holiday was a busy one at the reserve with a lot of visitors coming to walk off the excesses of Christmas and see what was about. The warmer weather is certainly a change from the last few weeks with temperatures reaching a balmy 5 degrees centigrade! Despite the change in weather it is still important to feed the birds and we are still seeing a lot of activity at our feeding stations. A flock of up to 9 long tailed tits are frequent visitors to the feeding screen and they are coming in very close to us as we top up the other feeders.
Long tailed tit (copyright Graham Eaton rspb-images.com)
A great spotted woodpecker has been a regular visitor to the Visitor Centre feeders and a green woodpecker has been seen and heard a number of times along Lin Dike. The water rails are still being seen at the duck feeding platform and there have also been good sightings very close to the centre in the wildlife garden. I am beginning to think that water rails being shy and elusive birds is an urban myth!
A dark breasted barn owl was reported on bird guides on Monday morning at the west end of the reserve and it was reported later in the day at Skelton Lake. This is a very unusual sighting as although not a separate species it is a continental variation of the British barn owl. There are still plenty of redwing and fieldfare sightings over the whole reserve particularly in the trees around pickup hide and the path at Lin Dike.
We have had some great views of stoats and weasels over the last couple of days. One of our staff members had a close encounter with a weasel on Monday when it ran across the path near Pickup and then hid in the leaf litter at the side with just its face poking out as she stood a watched for a couple of minutes. This morning I saw a stoat running around underneath the visitor centre, it disappeared briefly and reappeared with a vole in its mouth before running back under the shop and out of view.