Autumn migration continues and it certainly feels like autumn now, with a few days of heavy rain and cooler temperatures - it was even jacket weather this morning! Highlights of the last week include -
Bittern seen again on Phase 2 - still seemingly quite mobile, so look out on the reed fringes by the Beach Hut and the islands south of the Cromwell Trail.
Up to 3 marsh harriers on site - a juvenile and at least one, if not two males. They are spending most of their time at the southern end of the site, but can be seen from the southern edge of the Cromwell Trail and they do make occasional visits to the northern end of the site!
A brambling flew overhead on Sunday - thanks to John Ellis for this.
Water rails squealing away on Phase 1 and in silt lagoon 6 (the northernmost one near the Beach Hut). They have also been quite showy recently too, with most sightings from the muddy edges of the large central island in front of the Beach Hut.
There was a nice flock of gulls on Phase 1 earlier this week. Mostly lesser black-backs, there were also a few common gulls and black-headed. It is always worth checking gull flocks in case any scarcer species turn up. We have had yellow-legged, glaucous, Mediterranean and Caspian in the past.
Numbers of wigeon, teal and shoveler are slowly increasing and they are now coming out of eclipse - looking stunning in their new plumage.
The starling roost is starting to build. Volunteers Rob and Nick counted 1270 in the roost last weekend. This will grow over the next few weeks to hopefully several thousand.
There is a nice flock of mixed finches and reed bunting on the wild bird mix crop opposite the car park. this will be well worth checking out over the winter - we certainly hope to attract tree sparrow and a brambling or two would be nice as well!
Waders through recently include dunlin, greenshank, ruff, ringed plover, curlew, plenty of snipe now in, the first jack snipe of the winter, 200+ lapwing and varying numbers of golden plover. However, the star of the show last week was definitely curlew sandpiper - the first on site since July 2011. A smashing juvenile bird, it was at the southern end of the site and was a welcome site tick for me! Do look out for waders moving through the site throughout the rest of the autumn, particularly on the muddy edges around the Phase 1 islands.
A few common darters remain on the wing and butterflies recorded in the last week include an impressive list of red admiral, small tortoiseshell, speckled wood, small copper, common blue and clouded yellow.