Are wardens designed to blog!

Well here goes, my first blog after months of cajoling from the rest of the team.

My initial plan for the day was to spend it at Freiston Shore, however, it is always a wardens prerogative to change their minds, so instead i spent the morning at Frampton Marsh. Whilst carrying out some routine maintenance checks i bumped into Mel, one of our Visitor Centre volunteers, who was just returning from a walk down the river. A return journey from our car park to the river mouth is a rather challenging one at about three kilometres each way and is not to be tackled lightly. However, Mel was in good spirits as he had just been watching a velvet scoter, diving for molluscs at the rivers mouth.

Although The Wash is awsome for wetland birds, because of it's location it is a little hit and miss for sea birds, so a velvet scoter is a pretty impressive find with only a few thousand birds present along the UK's east coast in Winter.

Mel also spotted a black brant amongst the several thousand dark bellied brent geese that frequent the river and the adjoining saltmarsh, another good spot. So a walk along the river can certainly be rewarding. If you do have a couple of hours spare it's an experience well worth the effort.

On my return to the Vistor Centre i called in at the East hide to escape the blustery wind and to check on the door we raised the previous week. Scanning the freshwater scrapes and wet grassland just reminds me of how far the reserve has come in such a short time. Lapwings all over the wet grassland with curlews and redshanks feeding amongst the damp vegetation. The scrapes, despite the wind, were still full of wigeons, teals and brent geese - so many species that, until recently, just weren't found here.

On passing the reedbed, highlights included a little gull, two scaup, 14 whooper swans, approximately 40 black-tailed godwits, 4 ruffs and 5 avocets.

Happy bird watching.

Graham.