Our sightings book has been filled with loads of fantastic wildlife including birds, insects and flowers. We’ve also got plenty of young wildlife about at the moment and it’s lovely to see, there are little chicks following their parent on the water and fledglings taking their first clumsy flights.
We’ve got loads of coots around with cute chicks, which start off with little red heads. We’ve also got great crested grebe and shelduck with broods, along with loads of ducklings and goslings.
At Pick-up hide there have been shovelers, shelducks, gadwalls, pochards and a grey heron, plus a sand martin or two using the sand martin wall. There’s also been a cuckoo seen here and a couple of marsh harrier sightings.
On Main Bay we’ve had a common sandpiper, ringed plover, oystercatchers and avocets. There are hundreds of swifts around, particularly over Main Bay due to all the insects there are for them to eat.
At the opposite end of the reserve at Lin Dike, visitors have seen redshanks, a bar tailed godwit, a cuckoo and a kingfisher. Yesterday, a hobby was seen flying over the Moat reportedly carrying a swallow. Hobbies are such skilful fliers that they are able to catch birds such as swallows and swifts in the air!
Around the visitor centre, there has been a pied wagtail sighting and a yellow hammer flying by. On Saturday, a peregrine falcon flew over the centre whilst further towards the village a red kite was seen overhead.
There have been the usual brimstones, orange tips and speckled wood butterflies, plus a small copper, large skipper and beautiful common blues. We’ve got dragonflies as well, with four spotted chasers and the first black-tailed skimmer sighting of the year. We also get different types of bumblebees feeding on our wildflowers at the reserve; there are red-tailed, common carders, buff-tailed and early bumblebees.
There are plenty of blue-tailed, azure, and common blue damselflies about. The males of the azure and common blue damselflies look similar and so they can be difficult to tell apart unless you get a closer look. The azure damselfly has a ‘U’ shaped marking on segment 2 of its body which is absent on the common blue.
Just outside our visitor centre we have a lovely patch of wildflowers including red campion, oxeye daisies and viper’s bugloss. Bumblebees love the viper's bugloss like this common carder I spotted today :)