It's Friday the 13th and nothing has gone wrong...yet.
Fen Hide has seen some action this week with A great Northern Diver seen on Tuesday afternoon. 2 Water rail were also heard squealing away at the same time and we received the first sighting of a Green-winged Teal this winter.
Our resident Little Egret can still be seen almost every day with Tower Pool hide seeming to be the best location. TPH was good for seeing up to 120 Lapwing and flocks of around 30 Curlew on the weekend.
The early mornings are still excellent for seeing our Pink-footed Geese. At the most recent count on Sunday there were just short of 10000 accross the reserve and 3 to 4 thousand can often be seen lifting from the pools in front of Tower Hide. Aside from the Pinkies there's been 47 Barncale Geese and 60 Greylag Geese recorded this week. No reports of any Snow Geese though.
The wildlife garden and bird feeders are literally alive with garden birds. We counted 60 Tree Sparrows around the car park and a Great Spotted Woodpecker (above) is a frequent visitor to the peanut feeders.
It's hard to visit the Mosstown Marsh ponies at the moment without tripping over 7 or 8 Snipe with a Jack Snipe being spotted amomng them on Thursday.
Also of note: there was a small flock of Snow Buntings seen at Rattry which had apparently flown over the reserve so the occasional trip to the dunes would be deffo's worthwhile and Vicky saw a Little Grebe on the reserve but I don't know where.
Thats all we saw this week.
iain