Wetland bird survey June 2023

Another month gone, another WeBS count completed. A smattering of waders, a confused wigeon, the ubiquitous great white egret, good numbers of great crested grebes and a lone bittern who broke cover at the right moment, were some of the highlights. There are a lot of swans on site at the moment, mainly on Phase 3, along with increasing numbers of geese. The geese are doing their best to eat all the reed on Phase 2, this has created a very visible grazing line around the entire reed fringe, not great from a habitat creation point of view, as we are still trying to increase reed coverage, but the silver lining is that it has created a very tempting feeding habitat for heron species. Separate from the WeBS count, I saw 11 little egrets, 2 great white egrets, 5 grey herons and a bittern all feeding in close proximity in the grazed fringe recently. It's all about balance though, we don't want the reed fringe being pushed back too much, or colonisation of new areas by the reed overly hampered and so we'll be looking at protecting more blocks of reed on Phase 2, to give them a bit of a break from the gobbling geese.

Photo of a stoat taken by visitor David Peck. If you were wondering, stoats look stoatly different to weasels, which are themselves weasely recognised...