Quite naughtily I relegated a non-birdy first for the reserve towards the bottom of the blog last week, terribly poor form of me indeed. So it is extremely fortunate that I can make amends so quickly due to a note we found on the Visitor Centre on Tuesday morning. 'Marbled White - Pond dipping platform 17:30'. A very casual way to discover we've just had another first for the reserve! That's two in 2 weeks!! The marbled white is a species that is more commonly found in the south of the country, but it has spread north and east in the last few years. They have adapted to a broad range of habitats but are partial to coastal grasslands and purple flowers. Seeing as it thrives following hot dry summers, it may be worth having a look at knapweed and thistle heads around the reserve over the next few days. If you are lucky enough to find one, please do try and take a photo and pass it on to us at lincolnshirewashreserves@rspb.org.uk. Carrying on the butterfly theme we've had fantastic numbers of ringlet, meadow brown and small skipper at both Freiston and Frampton, along with singles of gatekeeper at the Frampton sea wall steps and a comma outside the office, both on the 11th.
Comma butterfly - Graham Madge (rspb-images.co.uk)
The other highlight of the week wasn't a single species but the several that I saw on the morning of the 18th down at Freiston. I was down there tweaking water levels to make sure we're ready for what could be a fantastic week of high tides starting on the evening of the 21st and peaking on the morning of the 25th. The saltmarsh will be covered and hopefully with this little bit of management the lagoon will be filled with birds, especially if the few hours I spent there was anything to go by.
The ball was set rolling with a first summer arctic tern (also referred to as a portlandica plumaged bird) which was loafing on one of the islands with a group of common tern. A familiar keeerit.........keeerit revealed a pair of adult sandwich tern keeping a close eye on their youngster. Sandwich tern parents accompany their offspring as they start to move south so keep an eye out for the scaly backed juveniles among adult birds. A quick visit to the field teaching compound was interrupted by some odd looking gulls circling overhead. the reason they looked odd is because they weren't gulls at all but a party of 6 arctic skua! They gained height and headed off inland like a hunting party on the look out for suitable quarry.
Arctic skua (juvenile) - Toby Collett
A quick visit down to the reservoir to finish off the morning resulted in a nice little roost of waders, gulls and terns. 64 black-tailed godwit, 128 dunlin, 1 common sandpiper and 1 juvenile mediterranean gull.
Mediterranean Gull (juvenile) - Toby Collett
Peak counts from Frampton this week include 38 little egret, (18th), 7 dark-bellied brent goose (16th), 2 marsh harrier (16th), 2 buzzard (16th), hobby (12th and 13th), 7 little ringed plover (14th), single golden plover (18th), 200+ dunlin (12th), 12 ruff (16th), 2 snipe (15th), over 900 black-tailed godwit on the 17th which included at least 7 colour ringed birds and a juvenile Continental limosa, single whimbrel (16th), spotted redshank all week, 4 greenshank (16th), double figures of green sandpiper throughout the week and 3 wood sandpiper on the 12th. A yellow-legged gull was seen from the visitor centre on the 13th.
Black-tailed godwits (juvenile on the left) - Toby Collett
With all the black-tailed godwits around at the moment, now is a great time to try and find the scarcer continental limosa race. Most of the godwits we see in this country are of the Icelandic race icelandica which breed, as the name suggests, in Iceland. The continental race breeds in Europe and we are lucky enough to have a stronghold at our Nene Washes reserve which is where we think these juveniles may have come from. Icelandic juveniles are much richer in colour than the the juvenile above and also appear later in the year so worth hunting for scaly backed godwits now. Another reason for grilling our godwits is to look for colour rings. This gives a fantastic insight into migration routes and distances traveled by the these wonderful wading birds. Hopefully I'll get back some details of the 8 colour ringed individuals I had this week and will let you know some life histories to give an idea of just what these birds go through each year.
The more you're out the more you see - https://twitter.com/BoyWonderBirder