What a few days we've been having with snow on the ground one minute and rain the next washing it all away!
We have machinery on the main island again finishing of the work we started last year. They are creating channels to seperate the two new islands and create an area for us to put our floating fences (for a more detailed explanation have a look through past blogs). This does mean that there might not be too much to see from the hide over the next couple of days. However there is plenty to see elsewhere on the reserve particularly with the new paths increasing access for everyone.
Disturbance on the island meant that many of the birds had taken to the lagoon and I got a really good view just under the beacon. Plenty of teal, red-breasted mergansers and Goldeneye. I didn't see the Green-winged teal or the Slavonian grebe, if you have any sightings please let me know. A flock of 40+ oystercatchers were disturbed from the island along with redshank and turnstones.
Cheers
Mhairi
Whilst working on some of the floating fence today I was pleasantly surprise by the amount of birds on the island despite the diggers zooming about. We had over 500 Dunlin, Turnstone really close in, redshank 100+ oystercatchers and snipe. So despite the diggers upsetting the birds the seemed to stick around!