It's that time of year again, when I start doing dawn vigils on site listening and looking for bittern activity and preparing for the coming season's Breeding Bird Survey. Despite the early starts, I love nothing more than getting out on site as the sky gets lighter, birds start singing and the sun rises.
On Monday last week, I was joined by our Midlands Region Project Manager, Ross Frazer and volunteer Stuart Carlton for a pre-dawn survey of the site. Whilst no one was treated to a bittern sighting, we were pleased to get great close up views of barn owl, sparrowhawk, 2 flyover curlew, water rail squealing, skylark and reed bunting singing and the pair of oystercatcher calling away as they flew from the Trent over onto the Phase 1 islands.
We haven't really had any spring-like days here at Langford yet and it's unusual to reach 1st March without having seen a butterfly or bumblebee, but with 13-14C predicted for the end of next week, I'm hopeful! It will be then that the BBS starts, with a chance to get out early morning to map the resident singing species before the warblers descend on us!
Displaying goldeneye are always a treat at this time of year and can be seen from anywhere on the visitor trails, records of singing coal tit from the woodland edge are nice to receive - this remains a scarce species at Langford and a goosander was reported on the silt lagoons from the public footpath on Friday - worth keeping a eye open for.
In other news, you may notice a nice new fence installed on the north western boundary of the site. This was built by our contractors Colin and Rob, from Lincs Groundcare and looks great, a huge improvement!