With water levels dropping rapidly in the last week or so, the monthly WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) seemed more normal this month, with reed, footpaths and bunds beginning to show again (the birds have somewhere to hide behind now!) and the large expanse of open water disappearing.

It is also that time of year when numbers of some species start to drop as birds begin their movements away from winter quarters. Numbers of…

With no major rain or snowfall recently and Tarmac’s pumps working at full pelt, the water levels here at Langford are starting to drop quite rapidly – much to everyone’s relief! We are noticing a difference on an almost daily basis now, with more and more features revealed each day, many of which we haven’t seen for two and a half months!

Here are some of today’s pictures showing everything being…

Inspired by our Conservation Officer Carl Cornish (thanks for the idea Carl) and following the taxonomy blog from last week, I thought I'd move onto collective nouns of birds and after some investigation, found some interesting ones – most of which I had never heard of.

So without further ado, here are some I found – all birds that you can find here at Langford....

Bittern – a sedge of bitterns (contributed…

This weekend was volunteer Sunday once again and this month there were a couple of activities on the agenda to keep everyone busy. First was clearance of some flood debris from around Phase 1. With the floods has inevitably come some rubbish! Fortunately not too much, but nevertheless it is an important job to rid the reserve of litter which is unsightly and potentially even harmful to wildlife.

As we made our way from…

It's amazing what rising temperatures and a bit of sunshine can do on a late January day. As I made my way around the southern end of the reserve this morning I was delighted to see numerous skylarks in the immediate vicinity and it wasn't long before I heard the first burst of song! One of my favourites, the skylark's song is beautiful and can often be heard on warm, bright days at the end of January and in February…

The joys of what? Taxonomy is the study of classification of organisms and I love it!

Indeed it is fascinating when you start to look at relationships between species and the meaning of scientific names.

All organisms known to science are classed using a hierarchal system, which in simple terms goes as follows –

Kingdom

Phylum (known as Division in the Plant Kingdom)

Class

Order

Family

Genus

Species

The…

Winter is definitely in full swing lately, with 4 inches of snow today and temperatures for tonight predicted to hit -10C. You would be forgiven for thinking that no insect life could possibly be active in this weather....however, for anyone who fancies an entomological challenge, there is one species that you may just encounter on these cold, snowy days.

Known as the 'snow flea', Boreus hyemalis, is not a flea…

One noticeable effect of the recent flooding here at Langford has been the amount of debris left behind by the receding flood waters. Consisting of plant material of various species, the ‘strand lines’ are proving to be excellent feeding areas for birds including meadow pipit, pied and grey wagtail, coot, moorhen, black headed gull, lapwing and snipe. And what are they feeding on….insects and plenty of them…

And here are some pictures from today....

Looking up the public footpath near the viewing screen

Silt lagoon 6

Phase 1 scrub

And finally, the birds aren't bothered when they know there is food around! Do remember to keep your feeders well topped up in this bad weather. Spot the robin....

It was Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) time again this morning, the first for 2013 and the first in a long time that I have done in the snow! We arrived on site to around half an inch this morning, but with more falling throughout the middle of the day, by the end of the count we had nearly 2 inches. The heavily falling snow made visibility rather difficult, but I persevered and here are the morning’s results – not bad numbers…

Once again, we had a very successful volunteer Sunday last weekend, with 16 people arriving for a day’s work – excellent turn-out! With the site still very much flooded, we were able to concentrate on some woodland and scrub management on the woodland blocks at the site’s main entrance. This area was planted up about 20 years ago and has remained unmanaged since. We have started taking out some of the smaller shrubs from…

What a lovely end to a beautiful day this evening, with a 12,000 strong starling roost and a great sunset over the reserve! The birds treated me to a spectacular display as always, with the full roost of around 12,000 birds in the air at once over Phase 2, only dropping into the reedbed at around 4.30 as it was getting too dark to see.

Other records from today include a female red crested pochard on Phase 2 among the…

Happy New Year to all our blog readers – hope you all have a great 2013. Our year has started off wet (there’s a surprise!), with the Trent bursting it’s banks again just before Christmas. This has filled the site up again to full capacity, unfortunately setting us back a bit in terms of getting water off site. The water level is now starting to recede again slowly, so at least access to our containers and polytunnel…

Just as water levels are starting to drop, here comes the rain again! It’s wet at Beckingham too, with standing water over much of the site today. We spent the day there removing brash from the first of the winter’s hedge laying on site – which looks fantastic.

Langford wildlife sightings since Monday’s WeBS count include kingfisher on silt lagoon 4, singing Cetti’s warbler on silt lagoon…

There's something new going on at RSPB Beckingham Marshes - our wet grassland development site up near Gainsborough. Recently opened to the public, Beckingham Marshes is a haven for breeding waders, wintering wildfowl and a thriving colony of tree sparrows. Site Warden Paul and Project Administrator Nicola have been busy preparing some podcasts, the first of which has been uploaded to the Beckingham Marshes webpage…

Usually at Langford, conducting a WeBS (Wetland Bird Survey) is all about trying to get a good view of as much of the site as possible, trying to find every last bird hidden in a reed turf or in a small inlet or behind a bund and about trying my best not to flush birds so they can be counted accurately.

However, none of that applied as I made my way around site today for the final WeBS of 2012 as everything was right…

Another week has passed since the flood and now Tarmac’s pumps are starting to take effect. Two large pumps are busy discharging water out of the site and levels have dropped around 12 inches since Tuesday, when the second pump was turned on. This has made it slightly easier to get to our bird feeders and to retrieve our floating fish shelters which have come lose from their anchors and have been floating just offshore…

Some nice birds from today with 3 curlew and a flyover goosander this morning and male stonechat, 5 pintail and grey wagtail this afternoon. Unfortunately, the search for the strange pipit with the large pale supercillium proved fruitless, as did my 'digi-binning' attempt at the stonechat, but you can't have it all!

Here are the latest photos from the public footpath on our southern boundary, looking north…

A week on since the worst of the flooding here at Langford and the waters have started to recede a little. Having come down around 24 inches since it’s highest point, the levels now seem to have come to a stand still and haven’t dropped much since the weekend. It is now a case of waiting for the rest of the water to recede over time – possibly a long time!

Despite the flooded reserve, we have been keeping…

If variety is the spice of life, then yesterday's volunteer work party was close to a vindaloo!

There was a good turnout for the day, with 16 volunteers attending.  We started with a talk by Senior County Archaeologist, Ursilla Spence.  Ursilla brought in numerous artefacts that were found during an archaeological dig that was carried out here at Langford in 2010.  Items included numerous sherds of pottery, including…

Yesterday we were pleased to welcome back onto site our model plane pilot Alan Lee, who has made this excellent video of the site in flood. take a look at the video here....

http://vimeo.com/54595669

Many thanks to Alan for giving his time to make this for us.

IMPORTANT. Please be aware that the area around Langford is still very dangerous due to continued flooding. Please always follow Environment Agency guidelines…

Well, it’s the end of a very surreal week here at Langford to say the least! The flood waters are now starting to recede a bit and have probably dropped about a foot from it’s highest point, which was reached on Wednesday. However, despite the drop in water levels, the site is still completely inundated. Here is the view from the viewing screen yesterday morning, showing well the height of the water!

Wildlife…

And we thought yesterday was bad....this is the view from the top of one of Tarmac's towers looking towards Phase 2 and Phase 1 in the distance at 13.00 today.

IMPORTANT. Please be aware that the river in flood is extremely dangerous - always follow Environment Agency guidelines and stay well away from flooded areas.

Anyone who has seen the River Trent around this area in the last few days will have noticed the dramatically swollen water levels. We have been keeping a close eye on this since the end of last week and yesterday the Trent finally burst it's banks and is now spilling over onto the site quite dramatically. Here are the latest pictures from this morning.

IMPORTANT. Please be aware that the river in flood is extremely…

Friday evening was incredible (and that's putting it mildly!). After a hard days work, we made our way to the containers to watch the evening's starling roost and it soon became apparent that numbers had increased significantly since the last time I watched them a couple of day's previously. Two large groups of around 10,000 each were gathering over the reserve, with one group over Phase 2 and the other over Phase 1.…