Despite the season starting off a little slowly, the sandwich terns have been making up for it and the colony has now built up to over 370 individuals. A couple of pairs have even started making scrapes. Last year was our biggest year for sandwich terns and around this time there were 250 and it wasn’t until the end of April that it looked like any were sitting. It was the middle of May last year that we really got an idea of the scale of the season and started getting counts of over 2000 individuals, so we’ll just need to wait and see. By the end of next week, we may also see our first little and common terns appearing as it was the 18th and 19th respectively last year that they were spotted.
In the meantime, black headed gulls have been getting busy setting up territories. There have been 580 adult individuals of which around 200 appear to be setting up nests. Unfortunately, the great crested grebe nest that was being built was washed out during high water levels but they are back displaying and have started rebuilding their nest in a different location. Oystercatchers, lapwings, Canada geese and several moorhens have also been making nests.
Other waders seen daily have been snipe, turnstone, golden plover, redshank and black tailed godwit. There have been lots of ducks including eider, tufted duck, wigeon, goldeneye, teal, red breasted merganser, shoveler and the odd male pochard and pair of gadwall. There have also been some common gulls and the solo Mediterranean gull is still hanging around. It really is looking and sounding like a seabird colony.