The snow continued to fall at Fairburn Ings, I was greeted by a pure white reserve when I arrived this morning after a slightly hairy drive along the A roads of east Leeds. I am writing this blog from home today though, we closed early because the snow continued to fall and there weren't any visitors at the reserve.
Despite the bad weather, we've had plenty of sightings over the weekend, the feeders continue to be the place to be for most of our smaller birds, although today there was a moorhen clambering on the feeders at the visitor centre. As well as the usual collection of finches and tits we've had reed buntings, bramblings, siskins and a redwing seen on or around the feeders. One lucky visitor spotted a stoat which had caught a rabbit near the visitor centre.
A large flock of more than 50 curlews were seen on the flashes on sunday, plus 12 shelducks. A kestral was seen above the main visitor car park and down at Lin DIke there were snipe, lapwings and teal. There have been several sightings of kingfishers down at Charlies Hide in the last few days.
One of our rangers, Jane, saw 10 goosanders and 20 goldeneyes plus teal and a tufted duck on the river near Village Bay viewpoint. She also saw bullfinches, long tailed tits and a goldcrest in the birch trees at Village Bay viewpoint.
That's fantastic Mrs C, are the pupils taking part in the Big Schools Bird Watch? (For more info click the link www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch ) It's great that the children are able to see so much at their school, seeing a lesser spotted woodpecker is a real treat!
Hi from Folkestone on the White Cliffs of Dover, where here St Mary's school has been open today, despite all the thick snow. The staff and pupils have seen so many birds over this Winter Wonderland weekend... 100's of herring gulls, which we see all the year round and they perch on the school rooftops. We've also seen blackbirds, robins, bluetits, jays, a green & a lesser spotted woodpecker, thrushes which we don't often see, sparrows, crows, magpies and many more. To-morrow the 50+ pupils in Year 3 will be doing a mass bird spotting watch outside and recording every bird they see, this is for their database in Maths. So look out for their photos, blogs, tweets and data.