Over the last few days we've had a few different birds listed in our recent sightings book including redstarts, spotted flycatchers, whinchats and wheatears. These birds are all likely to be passing through Fairburn as they start to head south for the winter. Yep, its that time already. They are all at the beginning of a long perilous journey, whinchats, wheatears and redstarts will spend the winter in the southern Mediterranean, or North Africa in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, whilst the spotted flycatchers will be travelling south of the equator, down to the Congo, Angola and some as far as South Africa. These birds will be joined by millions of others heading south for some winter sun, including the sand martins, swallows and swifts which have spent the summer at Fairburn Ings. The sand martins we’ve been watching fledge from the sand martin wall at Pickup Hide will soon be flying thousands of miles down to Africa, crossing the Sahara.
(Spotted flycatcher image by Andy Hay rspb-images)
Water levels have been quite high on the reserve with the recent the heavy rainfall, so there haven’t been as many waders about, but we’ve had big numbers of lapwings at Big Hole, with about over 100 there several times during the last few days. We’ve also had several sightings of marsh harriers recently, including a report of a young marsh harrier over the Flashes. Male and female marsh harriers look quite different to each other, the males has quite distinctive wings, brown, with grey along the edge and black wing tops. The females are dark brown with a cream coloured head and some cream colour to the leading edge of their wings, young marsh harriers are similar in appearance to females but don’t have the lighter wing markings. These birds look stunning as they fly low over the grassland and reedbeds of the reserve on the hunt for small birds and mammals. Look out for them at Pickup Hide, along the path down to Lin Dike, and from Lin Dike hide.
(Marsh harrier image by Chris Gomersall rspb-images)
Other highlights this week include an osprey which flew over Village Bay on Friday, water rail sightings on New Flash and Pickup Pool and a black necked grebe on Main Bay.
There are still plenty of damselflies and dragonflies about too, common blue and azure blue damselflies are often catching some sun on the footpaths of the Discovery Trail, along with plenty of common darters and ruddy darters. Plus some of the bigger dragonflies like the southern hawker