Ah swans, one of the most graceful of all birds as they glide effortlessly across the water (though of course, paddling like anything underneath). And the focus of day seven of the twelve days of Christmas.

The swan you will see all year round at Frampton Marsh is the mute swan. So called because, in comparison to other types of swan, it doesn't make much noise. This is the bird that gives us the image of swans we are…

Not that our geese are laying at the moment. It being winter and everything. But now is the time to come see lots of geese at Frampton Marsh.

Brent geese are the star attraction. The smallest goose in the UK, it is barely larger than a mallard, A plump dark body on little black legs and with a black head and neck (though with a white collar). The birds we see at Frampton come here in the winter from Siberia, to escape…

Day five of the twelve days of Christmas. So what am I talking about this time? Ring-necked parakeets? Colour rings and the information it gives about the movement of birds? Maybe gold will be the key word, and I'll talk about goldfinches or goldcrests?

Nope, I want to talk about a different sort of ring. The sort your telephone makes.

If you have a problem, and no-one else can help, you can call the A Team. But…

Yes, you read that right. Colly birds, not calling birds.

Welcome once again to our 12 days of Christmas. So what is this about colly birds then?

Well, the word 'colly' is an old word, related to one still in use, colliery. That is, a coal mine. Colly means as black as coal. So a colly bird is in fact a blackbird. Which also sings nicely, and hence would justify as a calling bird. So I guess it works out ok after all…

Hen harriers that is!

Yes, welcome to the third part of the 12 days of Christmas. I suppose I could have talked about red-legged partridge, also known as French partridge. But instead it seemed to be a good idea to talk about hen harriers.

Hen harriers are a really stunning bird of prey. Sometimes nicknamed 'grey ghosts' due to the colour of the males. Or alternatively 'skydancers', for their incredible and aerobatic…

Welcome to the second part of our twelve days of Christmas. And no, that isn't a typo up there (though I'm not going to guarantee anything for the rest of the post). I'm not going to talk about turtle doves. That would be far too obvious, and besides I've talked about them recently. No, instead I'm going to talk about those diving relatives of tortoises, turtles.

Did you know we get turtles in the…

..... a partridge in a pear tree.

Only, lets face it, they probably didn't. Partridges (either the native grey or the introduced red-legged) are ground birds. Much happier sitting under said tree than *in* it.

But hang on a moment. There is plenty of other wildlife that loves pear trees. In the spring the lovely snowy-white blossoms are a great source of nectar for bees, hoverflies and all sorts of other insects…

Our christmas treasure trail is now up and ready for you to come along and have a go. You can collect a sheet from the visitor centre and then make your way around the reedbed trail while looking out for the trail cards. The theme this year is twelve days of christmas but with a wildlife twist. Learn some fascinating facts and win a prize at the same time. All you have to do is unjumble the highlighted letters from the…

Apologies for the delayed posting of the sightings between the 6th and 12th, I've been busying myself out on the scrapes as we seek to improve the habitat, both for birds and visitors and it's all going pretty well. We installed a sluice in North Scrape to allow us to empty it entirely and despite the fog and conditions, we did pretty, pretty well.... We don't win the Golden Welly by luck you know.

The minimum…

Lapwings are such beautiful birds and here we have the privilege of seeing them all year round. They have a distinctive call which sounds like ‘peewit’ and their black and white appearance and round-winged shape in flight make them unmistakable. They can often be seen wheeling through winter skies in large flocks and some of the highest known winter concentrations of lapwings are found at the Wash.

They are…

Nope, not quite in caroling mode yet. This is about bird rings.

You may notice that sometimes birds have on their legs one or more rings. This is not the latest in fashion, no such thing as birdy bling. Instead these are birds have been caught by experts and the rings fitted. Some rings are made from metal and have a code on it. This allows the bird to be identified if caught again. But rather than trust to that, for…

Well, that was all a bit of nervous time. The strong winds coupled with the high tide meant that there was a very real danger of us being flooded out. Luckily our sea banks held firm, but others were not so lucky. There has been flooding in the centre of Boston, with the Boston Stump (St Botolph's Church) amongst others receiving a lot of damage. Depending on which news report you read, anywhere between 200 to 1000 people…

Firstly a quick reiteration of John's blog post from last night. Please don't visit either Frampton or Freiston till at least lunchtime tomorrow. This is pretty much the message for most East Coast reserves as there are still warnings in place from the Environment Agency. Best way to get updates on the Lincolnshire coastal reserves is keep checking our Twitter account as site mangers and wardens will post news as…

The Environment Agency have issued severe flood warnings for the areas around by Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore reserves. As a precaution the reserves will be closed until Saturday lunchtime. Please do not visit until it's safe to do so. For up to date information see the Environment Agency website. John

Having peered out of the office window and spotted my first robin for a long time, it prompted me to learn a bit more about these well loved birds.

The robin is perhaps the best known of all British birds and apparently is Britain’s unofficial national bird. Juvenile robins have a brown rather than a red breast until their first moult when they grow their red feathers. These little birds can be very territorial and will…

A bit like last week we have no outright headline hogger this week. Instead we split it between 2, and the first of them belongs to the brief party of 3 Bewick's swans (named after the incredibly talented Thomas Bewick) that dropped on to the saline lagoon at Freiston for an hour on the morning of the 22nd. While we have regularly hosted whooper swans so far this autumn/winter, Bewick's swans elude us and we only really…

I was having a good old look through the photos on our RSPB Frampton Marsh community page and came across a rather lovely picture of a weasel that had been taken by a visitor at the reserve. We’ve had quite a few sightings of weasels on the reserve in the past with some being in the grass around the visitor centre.

Weasels are our smallest carnivores and are active hunters feeding on small mammals like voles and…

What a fickle bunch we birders are. One week the white-rumped sandpiper gets top billing and all the attention, the next (i.e. this one) it gets relegated to third place on the highlight reel, though technically it does get first mention so it shouldn't be too upset. 

So what was this weeks headline bird? A fourth for the UK? An American vagrant? A Mediterranean wanderer? Or a scarce but regular visitor to the east…

No, we're not about to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Joni Mitchell wrote the song Big Yellow Taxi (later covered by Bob Dylan, Amy Grant, Counting Crows and many others) which included that line. In fact, something of an environmentalist song. There are references to DDT and the only place where people can see nature is in specially controlled areas. But this isn't about a taxi, this is about a digger.…

Molly our residential volunteer was working in the office garden today, clearing out some dead leaves to pop onto the compost heap. Very useful things, compost heaps. Everyone should have one. That way we wont need anywhere near as much peat and we can save the fragile peat bogs. But I digress!

Whilst working, she pulled aside a clump of dead vegetation and found underneath a little newt. A smooth newt, as far as i can…

There's a sense of déjà vu to this weeks sightings with our stop press highlight from last week being the same this week..... well species wise at least. 

After the elusive juvenile white-rumped sandpiper of last week, the same bird (which has been around since the 14th of October at least) proved equally hard to pin down in the north of the county (at Alkborough and then into neighbouring East Yorkshire…

Snow buntings, that is. A little flock of these rather attractive birds has, in the past few days, been wowing visitors to the reserve.

Snow buntings are winter visitors to the UK, with a few staying all year round up in the Cairngorms. I have seen them cadging crumbs under picnic tables at the ski centre on top of Cairngorm in summer. Just like you might see sparrows elsewhere. These are very much arctic birds, breeding…

We're going to start this week with our STOP PRESS bird from last week. The juvenile white-rumped sandpiper that was briefly seen twice on the Frampton scrapes on the 1st popped up to Gibraltar Point on the Saturday then returned to see us on the 4th. This is the 33rd wader species to be recorded feet down on managed wetland areas of the reserve in 2013 and if you include grey phalarope and woodcock, that have been seen…

You may have sang the Kookabura song in times past but did you know that it is one of the largest kingfisher species. These stocky birds are found in Australia and their call is a laughing sound. There are roughly 90 species of kingfisher world wide with many being found in the Australasia region.

Kookaburra- J. Adam

Much closer to home we find the Eurasian kingfisher which I have to admit is one of my favourite birds…

Regular visitors to Frampton have been asking about some work we've been doing. A patch of land next to the reedbed that used to grow kale and teasels has been ploughed up. What is going on?

The answer is that we are doing our bit to help what is one of the UK's most threatened birds, the turtle dove. The purring cooing of turtle doves used to be *the* sound of the British summer. But in recent years their numbers…