Frampton Marsh recent sightings: 6th - 12th May 2017

Howdy folks! Welcome back once again to the Frampton Marsh weekly sightings blog. With me, Chris the visitor guy!

Got some great news this week. But first, we will crank the time machine dial back to last weekend.

You may remember in last week's edition of the news I mentioned how the single day record for the site had been broken? Well, the new record lasted all of a week. Our summer assistant warden Anthony rose to the bait, went out and saw 111 species on the reserve (and another 2 off). A stupendous effort, especially by a single observer. Well done!

So, how about some maps?

There was also a whinchat about.

The jack snipe was a good spot, as there are not many of those and lots of common snipe!

So far, so steady. Almost into a routine. And the on Thursday, BOOOOOOOOOOM!

Yes, a lovely pair of long-legged beauties, black winged stilts. You can see some video footage of them here.

But more than just that, a great white egret too. A bird that is surprisingly hard to track down at the site (though we get a lot of mis-identified little egrets). No mistake on this though. Here is a slightly fuzzy record shot.

And finally, today

Stilts, stints, sanderlings and swans. We do other letters aside from S, I promise!

Well, that was the week, how about some nice photos? Or even a video. No problem there this week, Ian Ellis has a couple of goodies. Check out this cuckoo, and this remarkably close roe deer.

Last week we had a stoat photo. This week it is a weasel. Thank you Jeremy Eeyons. You can tell the difference by the much shorter tail, not tipped with black. That is the weasel I mean, not Jeremy!

Jeremy also supplied this fantastic portrait of one of the bearded tits which are still lurking about. Usually in the reeds by the side of the road or the bottom car park. Though sometimes also in the reedbed.

Talking of reedy birds, this reed warbler with fluffy knickers was caught by Stuart JPP

And this grumpy sedge warbler was supplied by Alan Bewster.

This drake shoveler is a wonderful action shot by Mark Holmes

And finally, check out this male ruff in some really fine summer colours. As photographed by Terry Stanton. Not quite all the way into adult plumage yet. But definitely getting there.

And so there we have it. Another week done and dusted. if you are coming to see the black-winged stilts or anything else, do pop into the visitor centre for the latest news. Or indeed for our very nice coffee, or local Lincolnshire ice-creams.

You can keep up to date with the news from the reserve by checking out our Twitter feed. No need to have an account yourself, we keep it open so everyone can see. If you tweet yourself, please can you @ mention us in, and also add #RSPBframpton (or #RSPBfreiston if it is from there) to help us see it and spread the word. If you have any videos, photos or drawings we'd love to see those too. Please email us at lincolnshirewashreserves@rspb.org.uk, put them on Twitter, on our Flickr page, or our Facebook page.

Thank you all for reading this. I hope you have a great week of birdwatching, stay safe, and I'll catch you next time.