What a lovely bank holiday Monday it was! The sun was out, temperatures were up and we had a lot of happy visitors wandering around the reserve. So nice to meet everyone and to hear the very positive comments about the site.
In terms of birdlife, highlight of Monday is probably the very showy wood sandpiper. This will be on its way back to its breeding ground in northern Scotland, after spending the winter down in Africa. It spent most of Monday poking around the shoreline of the freshwater sacrapes, by the path leading to the East hide. It will have been picking up flies and other insects, to give it a boost of energy ready for the final push northwards. At times it really was rather close. No need for a scope, binoculars or even just looking gave a really rather good view.
Elsewhere, there was a party of 20 whimbrel on the wet grasslands. Two turtle doves were seen on-and-off during the day in the hedgerow around the back of the grassland. A male ruff was spotted trying to court the ladies, maybe a bit ambitious since he hadn't fully developed his feather plumes.
There are still quite a few brent geese about. Maybe 500 or so. They won't be with us for too much longer, soon they will head off to the Artic to breed. Still a bit nippy up there though, so for the moment they are enjoying the spring sunshine down here. In amongst them is a 'black brant', the darker North American version.
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.