Despite the fact that the wind is still coming from the south, it was distinctly chilly as I stood shivering up at the Washland viewpoint this morning! I was hopping to see an otter to be honest, but instead I found lots and lots wigeons, my favourite ducks!:
Image credit: John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
There were also plenty of shovelers, sifting around their spade shape beaks:
Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Although I haven't been with the otters over the last couple of days, several visitors have. One was splashing around in the washland pool on Friday at around midday and two were showing very well yesterday morning at around 8am.
I walked along the riverbank yesterday morning (which is really rather muddy at the moment by the way!) and I saw a great egret and a little egret side by side just north of East Wood. A water pipit flew up nearby and a green sandpiper flew north. There was a big flock of at least 160 lapwings whirling around over New Fen viewpoint and a kingfisher was showing well in front of the viewpoint.
Simon was ringing down in Brandon Fen and caught some interesting birds. This included a goldcrest, a large continental race male blackbird and plenty of redpolls. This included 28 lesser redpolls and 16 common redpolls. Please see my blog post on Tuesday for a "lively discussion" of this species. He also saw 124 redwings, 34 fieldfares and at least eight bramblings in Brandon Fen.
There was also plenty of bird of prey activity yesterday including an extremely late sighting of a hobby over Joist Fen viewpoint. A common buzzard was over West Wood and at least nine marsh harriers were hunting over the west end of the reserve.
As the day went on, it became clear that both great egrets were still present and one was feeding on the Norfolk side of the river in the late afternoon. As darkness fell over Joist Fen viewpoint, several common snipe flew out of the reedbed and a group of whooper swans flew in to roost somewhere at the west end of the reserve (it really was too dark to see them by that point!) We hope to see you soon.