The little egrets continue to be seen at Pick-up hide, along with up to five herons, pochards, a green sandpiper and a juvenile little ringed plover. Up at Big Hole, there has been a little grebe with chicks and a yellow-legged gull.
On Main Bay, there are lots of noisy lapwings swooping about as well as oystercatchers and common terns. I sat watching a male great crested grebe catch fish for its 3 chicks the other day from Bob Dickens hide, and there was also a brood of shelducks on the bay.
We had our first recording this year of a marbled white butterfly on Wednesday which is really beautiful! There are heaps of butterflies about at the moment, with large numbers of meadow browns, ringlets, gatekeepers and green veined whites on the reserve. Lots of dragonflies can be seen around our ponds including black tailed skimmers, ruddy darters and brown hawkers.
We’ve got lots of exciting moths in our light trap this morning for our meet the moths event. There are too many to mention them all but the stars were a poplar hawk moth, a large emerald, a peppered moth and white satins which have never been recorded on this reserve before! I managed to get this photo of one of the white satin moths before it flew off.