Well, I've just spent my first weekend for a while on duty in the visitor centre. On the whole the weather has been quite good, and we've had lots of visitors through who have seen some of the newly returned migrants. It's always an exciting time of year, with new birds turning up all the time. So far cuckoo and grasshopper warblers have been evading me. Not the case for Tim James however, who got this cracking photo of a grasshopper warbler yesterday.
Plenty of sedge warblers have been heard and the occasional reed warbler is beginning to arrive and add it's song to the other noises coming from the reedbed!
Photo of a newly arrived sedge warbler by Tim James
So apart from the bird surveys that David mentioned last time, the reserve team will be mainly concentrating on getting the footpaths up to standard for the forthcoming visitor season. In the next few weeks, we hope to have improved the disabled access up to the viewpoint at New Fen North, and resurfaced the length of the hard track between New Fen and Joist Fen. This is no easy task, with about 40 tonnes of hardcore and 20 tonnes of limestone dust currently waiting to be spread by keen staff and volunteers! Please bear with us while we carry this work out. I know access for wheelchairs is quite challenging at the moment, but we are trying to improve it.
Exciting sighting from our volunteers on duty in the visitor centre, a bittern has just walked across a gap in the reeds around the visitor centre pool, and is currently being viewed by at least four people with telescopes! Since we got Paul the digger driver to clear and widen the pool, we've had a number of good wildlife sightings. There are currently a pair of shovelers, and a pair of gadwall on the pool, and a curlew has been seen taking a bath there too!
That's all from me for the moment, I'm off to do some weight training to help prepare me for shifting all that stone later in the week! If you haven't been for a while, why not make it your aim to come this week? It's the time of year when anything can appear, and there's always the chance of a rarity turning up (probably when I have a day off!).
Hope to see you soon!
Katherine (Warden)