Weekly Round-up: 27 July - 2 August

Hello again!

Yes, it's me again. Toby is still off on leave with his new baby, so the consise round-ups continue.

The Baird's sandpiper unfortunately disappeared last Friday night, so no sign this week. We do currently have a pectoral sandpiper though that turned up today. First seen on the reedbed lagoon, it later reloacted to an area near to the East hide. It was showing well for most of the day, so fingers crossed it will hang about.

You may well have noticed that there is a heavy wader bias towards these updates. Maybe not a shock given how good a site we are for them. We ended July on a massive 27 species, equalling the record for an RSPB reserve. held by, er, oh yes...... us! The pectoral sandpiper will hopefully send us on the way to a good August total too.

Moving away from birds briefly, we've been getting reports of clouded yellow butterflies around the reserve. These bright yellow butterflies might be mistaken for the brimstone butterflies that often herald spring, but have a strong black edge to their wings. They are migratory species, coming over to our shores each year from southern Europe and North Africa. In good years they can even breed here. A smart butterfly for anyone to spot.

Sticking with lepidoptery, during today's bug hunt a 'wooly bear' caterpillar was found. This is the young of one of the tiger moths. Not sure which one, maybe the moth trapping we'll be doing later this month will tell us!

Moving back to birds, a young black tern was around the scrapes last weekend. Wood and green sandpipers are still regularly showing and a young cuckoo was seen diving into the reedbeds this morning. Overall, a pretty diverse bag of things to look for.

Oh, and not actually on the reserve, but just off it....  During the birdwatching cruises organised by the South Lincs local group, there were sightings of little tern, great skua and a whole mass of know in their gorgeous summer colours. There are a few places left on one cruise (12 September I believe), I can recommend that they are well worth going on.