What a cracking day, but how many new arrivals?
The Easter Sunday volunteer day was a particularly early start with the annual water rail survey kicking off before the sun had risen at 6 o'clock, none the less an early start is always worthwhile and usually turns up a few gems.
Even before the survey started, John Ellis was spot on with the first prediction of the day. As we wandered past the lagoons the sight of returning avocet greeted us, 2 birds on the wing circling overhead before dropping into phase two. A real pleasure to see these birds back and right on cue.
Moving on to the survey, the water rail were somewhat subdued in response to our tape recording of squeals compared to last year, but we managed to coax at least 5 pairs into action.
The resident barn owl on a late shift was still quartering the western scrub bank of the reedbed, and floated silently over the heads of the water rail surveyors all unaware of his presence. Next up was a brief glimse of a bittern still finding morsels in the wet reed - just a fleeting view in flight until the well camouflaged feathers merged into the reed.
The number of volunteers coming in for the bank holiday weekend was fantastic, and some seriously hard graft to put fish shelters into the newly established phase two habitat was successfully dealt with. One could say the scenes of Allan and David rowing into the wind was reminiscent of the Cambridge and Oxford boat race; commitment, strength and willing - just a touch more technique and they'll be ready for the Olympics!
So what were the other arrivals?
Well, the list included male blackcap in the woodland edge, yellow wagtail in phase two, 2 - 3 more willow warbler in the scrub thickets, a brimestone butterfly spotted by Dave Watt, small tortoiseshell, and a gorgeous view of a comma butterfly neatly picked up by Alison Saunders at the end of the day
A big thank you to all the volunteers that get stuck in each month, the progress thus far is really a credit to your work. Hopefully the rewards are plain to see with some superb records and cracking views from roe deer and brown hare through to avocet and cetti's warbler, what will be next?
float like a butterfly
Yes but which olympics !!!!!!
If somethings hard to do , its not worth doing - Homer (Simpson)