Today was a clear up day on the island. Having deployed our first floating fence for the season we will be monitoring it throughout spring and summer to see if we need to make any tweaks for the second one. We moved gravel and wood to make things a little less conspicous from the hide. I have to say the fence looks good bobbing in the channel and hopefully with our tern decoys being made by Normans Wife Sarah and a speaker shouting out enticing little tern calls the island will be looking good.
Hand made decoy little terns raring to go (Photo: Norman Holton)
It's going to be a learning curve this season. Sandwich terns are set to return any day now with Dave Blackledge (Warden) putting a date of next wednesday (Maybe we should have had a sweepstake for it - Anyone want to predict?). My first sighting of Little Terns last year was the 24 of April incidently an hour after we had put the Tern decoys out. Eyes to the skies for our first returning birds - exciting!
Eider numbers have shot up over the last couple of weeks from 1 single lonely looking male to 70+ last week and I had 40 on sunday. This is similar with great crested grebe and Red Breasted Mergansers. The 3 Scaup that have been around for a wee while now were still visible on sunday. Slavonian Grebe was also seen yesterday to the left of the hide.
Other birds of note include gadwall moving between the small pond in the corner of the reserve of the track and the old quarry. Also 4 little grebe in the corner pond making a bit of racket the other day. I also had the priviledge to see a wildlife special - Great-crested grebe doing a penguin dance near to the new path, that is until they noticed me watching...felt a bit liked I had ruined their party.
Finally a picture of the Cumbria coast reserves team having lunch on our new picnic bench at white rock. If you are out and about this easter at Hodbarrow why not take a picnic and enjy the view from our new bench which has room for disabled access.
As usual let me know anything you see and your firsts for spring!
CheersMhairi