Good morning. As long as you get the weather right, its a great time of year to come and see both sunrise and sunset on the reserve. Here is an assortment of landscape shots from the last week:
The gloomy visitor centre pond on Sunday morning:
Moreorless the same view at the end of the day:
Sunset over Joist Fen viewpoint on Monday evening:
Image credits: David White
Sunrise back towards the visitor centre yesterday morning:
Image credit: Matt Walton
Moving on to recent sightings, a large gaggle of geese flew over the visitor centre on Sunday afternoon. It was a mixed flock of around 170 Canada geese and greylag geese. They certainly made lots of noise and turned a few heads when they went over!
An unexpected first for the reserve was found on Monday when a drake mandarin duck was photographed in front of New Fen viewpoint with two mallards. Sadly, this colourful creature didn't hang around but it was a great addition to the reserve list nonetheless.
Also on Monday, three kingfishers were seen on the perch at the back of the visitor centre pond and a bearded tit was seen from the visitor centre window. I spent some time down at Joist Fen viewpoint later on in the day and had a great view of the male hen harrier that has been present for the last couple of weeks.
There were two common buzzards over New Fen viewpoint on Tuesday and six bearded tits were seen near the path to Mere Hide. There were also still one or two small tortoiseshells on the wing in the mild sunshine.
I had a nice walk around Brandon Fen before work yesterday morning and saw at least 20 bearded tits feeding on the top of the reed stems from the riverbank. There were at least 78 wigeons in front of the Washland viewpoint and a water pipit flew over.
Meanwhile, further down the reserve, Matt Walton photographed a great white egret that was flying between Joist Fen viewpoint and Mere Hide:
Thank you very much to Matt for sharing these images with us.
There were also two water pipits feeding right in front of the Washland viewpoint, which was a particular treat. A bittern was skulking about at the edge of the visitor centre pond for most of the morning and it was eventually seen swimming across the pool by Suzanne and Tony.
The weather forecast is looking mostly dry for this coming weekend so why not come and visit? We hope to see you soon!