Forgive the lack of updates on the blog of recent times. This is mostly due to the last couple of months being amongst our busiest times of the year for our breeding birds.
Although the island has been closed to visitors, that does not mean that time has stood still! plenty has been happening. Havergate has been awash with life and has come alive and green over the spring.
We have been busy keeping tabs on the breeding birds – The earlier sitters being the Canada geese who nested on the sea walls and on the lagoons. Lesser black backs and Herring gulls started sitting towards the end of March and into April. And more recently the black headed gulls and Common tern have started sitting. We keep the island closed to visitors over this time because we would like to limit disturbance to these birds when they are nesting and raising their young.
I keep an keen eye on the island by setting up trail cameras. My last check thankfully didn’t show anything we didn’t want to see (namely fox) but did throw up some cracking shots. The photo below was from a trail camera I have set up on the ridge. 3 Spoonbills that I presume are on their way to one of our lagoons (NB the date is not set accurately on this camera).
I also keep capturing this cheeky leveret on another I have set up looking out over the gorse area.
Now things have calmed down we will be busy getting the island up and ready again for our trips to start up. This will include painting the boat, mowing the paths and cutting back the vegetation and cleaning all the hides. Our next trip is the Spoonbill Surprise on the 28 & 29 July, or if you fancy a summer adventure with all the family join, us on our Havergate Adventure which will be running over 18,19 & 20 August.
For booking and more information on all of our trips and to keep up to date with all the happenings on the island, take a look at our website rspb.org.uk/havergateisland