• Finally!

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 1st – 7th October

    The Svalbard barnacle geese are finally here!  They arrived 11 days later than last year and we were all starting to wonder where they were.  They always seem to appear out of nowhere, one day there are none and suddenly the next they are here.  On Thursday we counted 490 on the wetlands looking out from Bruiach Hide.


    Photo credit: E.Neilson

     The other highlight of…

  • Goodbye

    Mersehead Recent Sightings: 24th – 30th September

    At the end of last week from the Meida hide, 2 Shoveler, a Little Grebe and a large flock of Greylag geese were seen. At the Bruiach hide, 240 Pink Footed Geese were seen at the wetlands. 2 Grey Heron were seen on the salt marsh.


    Photo credit: John Bridges

    This morning, members from the Scottish Ornithologist’s Club arrived at Mersehead to search for wildfowl…

  • WeBS

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 17th – 23rd September

    Autumn has arrived and that means that the Wetland Bird Surveys (WeBS) start again at Mersehead and Kirkconnell Merse. At 296ha Kirkconnell Merse is one of the largest expanses of saltmarsh habitat in Scotland.  The best place to view the reserve is from the quay at Glencaple looking across the River Nith.  A footpath winds its way along the eastern side of the river…

  • Hot with a Wintry Feel

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 10th – 16th September

    The rising water levels around the Meida hide have been attracting a lot of wildfowl to the reserve. Yesterday morning, 680 Teal, 12 Wigeon, 34 Shoveler, 41 Canada Geese, 2 Greylag Geese and 42 Mallard were counted. Large flocks of Lapwing, around 700, have also been present soaring over the wetlands, Little Grebe and a handful of Pink-footed Geese have been reported…

  • Art at the Reserve

    Throughout this year, three artists have been taking part in the first ever artists-in-residence programme on RSPB reserves in Scotland. The scheme, which was funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, allowed artists studying for PHDs in Scotland to work with different organisations across the country.

     

    Through their work, all three artists have brought a new perspective to both our reserves and…

  • A Swirling Wisp

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 3rd – 9th September

    Water levels in front of Media Hide have been coming up quickly this week and attracted a whole load of wildfowl and waders giving the reserve a very wintery feel. With Hestan Hill as a backdrop, 260 lapwing have been soaring over the wetlands. Snipe have been very active this week with a peak count of 65 swirling over the reedbed. 

      

    Photo credit: R.Flavelle

    The…

  • Water Levels are on the Rise

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 27th August – 2nd September

    At the start of the week the majority of the swallows at Mersehead departed for the long journey to Africa. We have now reached the transitional period between the summer migrants departing and the winter migrants arriving. At the Visitor Centre, the male yellowhammer continues to be the star attraction with some visitors spending considerable amounts of…

  • Telegraph wires

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 20th – 26th August

    The start of the week felt very autumnal with the cool breeze and birds starting to flock together.   Out on the beach a flock of 22 redshank have suddenly made an appearance whilst over the merse a group of 46 lapwing went sailing by.  Round on the spit at the mouth of the Southwick Water the oystercatcher and curlew have started forming the high tide wader roost. Ringed…

  • Red Kite Seen Again

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 13th August – 19th August

    A month has passed since I began my placement at Mersehead. My duties have been highly varied from land management work such as grass cutting, repainting the holiday cottages, ragwort pulling from the hay field and inspecting the anti predator fence for damage. I have also been involved in a lot of public engagement work, from manning the visitor centre, to…

  • Is 99 a record?

    Peter Howard a mature male has just completed his third, two week stint as a residential volunteer at Mersehead. His home is in East Anglia and finds the change of geographical location and the time spent at Mersehead interesting and stimulating.

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 6th August – 12th August

    Part of the pleasure of bird watching is the time that you spend with like minded quality people.

    This is particularly…

  • Phasianus colchicus

    Jonathan Taylor has just started a 2 month residential volunteering placement at Mersehead and has volunteered at Loch Lomond and Forsinard Flows.   

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 30th July – 5th August

    The weather has been very topsy-turvy as we head into August: blazing hot sunshine one day, freezing cold with heavy rain and strong winds the next. None of this has deterred our usual visitors to the bird feeders…

  • Parasol

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 23rd – 29th July

    Every day this week in the early morning, there has been a grasshopper warbler singing away at the end of the woodland just before you go down the slope to the beach.  Perched on the driftwood house a raven has been cawing most mornings too. Linnets are starting to flock together and can be seen feeding on the merse.  This week a kingfisher has been spotted zooming along…

  • Heat and Hirundines

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 16th - 22nd July

    As summer kicks into life albeit very slowly, Mersehead is beginning to liven up after the brief early summer lull. As well as all the regular birds visiting the visitor centre (Siskin/ Lesser Redpoll) and trails we were recently joined by over 250 hirundines (swallows and martins). This unusual peak in numbers was due to the lovely weather on Tuesday followed by the storm…

  • Sow-thistle and sandpipers

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 9th – 15th July

    It is a wild, wet and windy day today with rain currently lashing against the window pane however there is plenty to report from the past week at Mersehead.

    Some new flowers are appearing out on the merse and beach at the moment. Common sea lavender and sea milkwort are the latest additions out on the saltmarsh. Sea milkwort is adapted to surviving in salty conditions…

  • Spider in the Hide

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 2nd -8th July

    A male Siskin is occasionally popping by the bird feeders at the Visitor Centre and I’m sorry to say I missed the male Sparrowhawk taking a bird from the feeders earlier in the week. Sorry in both senses. Good numbers of Lapwings (approximately 60) are still out on the fields with smaller numbers of Curlew.

      

    Photo credit: A.Hay

    However, it’s the creepy crawlies which are…

  • Volunteering, Ringing and Rain

    Daniel Whitelegg is completing a 5-week residential volunteering placement at Mersehead as part of his university course.  

    It’s been a fairly quiet (and wet) week on the reserve, with most wildlife hiding away to finish breeding. All the lapwing chicks are now grown up and the great tits in the visitor centre box have fledged. The visitor centre, rainbow lane and the meida hide are becoming the best places to see wildlife…

  • Mersehead Recent Sightings 25th June - 1st July

    Even though the breeding season is tailing off, we’ve seen a few gems this week. The first was a new bumblebee to the reserve: the tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum). It was spotted along the path to Bruaich Hide amidst about 50 buff- and white-tailed bumblebees.

    A common bumblebee in mainland Europe, the first individual was found down in Wiltshire in 2001. Since then, they’ve spread northwards relatively quickly…

  • Mersehead Bioblitz 2016

    On the 18th and 19th June we embarked on a weekend long Bioblitz. A bioblitz is when people including experts and local people gather together and record as many flora and funa within a designated area and time. We were very lucky that the Dumfries and Galloway Environmental Resources Centre joined us to help in this event.

    Mersehead has never had a Bioblitz and we were excited to see what we would find. So on Saturday…

  • The return of Apus apus

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 11th June – 17th June

    The first swift of the 2016 was spotted soaring over Rainbow Lane yesterday evening. To begin with there were just 2 and then suddenly they had increased to 16 and then 37. Then, just as suddenly, they had all disappeared. Swifts only return to the UK for a very short time, just 3 months, before returning to Africa. They almost never land and have the ability to…

  • Recent Sightings 4th-10th June

    The big news this week is the return of the Painted Lady butterflies. Although they’re not rare or endangered, their story is quite enthralling. These insects travel a mega journey from North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia to Europe, where they spend the summer. They can be found throughout the UK and Ireland, even as far north as Shetland. They’re not too fussy about habitat, so perhaps you’ll find them in your…

  • Eggs and bacon?

    Mersehead Recent Sightings 28th May – 3rd June

    At Mersehead we use a Robinson trap to catch moths at night. The moths fly towards the light and spiral down towards the source of the light and are deflected into the box. Moths which fly into the trap are further contained by the eggboxes placed within and will snuggle up in the dark corners they provide.

    The Mersehead moth trap by Roseanne Watt

    The recent…

  • Recent sightings 21st-27th May

    A highlight of the week has been the lapwing chick count. There’s now a minimum of 41 chicks, ranging from newly-hatched to nearly-fledging. There are probably more lurking in the longer vegetation.

    They’re not the only youngsters. Owls (we believe barn owls) chose to breed in the Sulwath Garden and they now have chicks. Perhaps you’ll be able to hear some cheeping if you stand by the trees.

    You might…

  • Egretta garzetta, or the little egret.

    Two thousand, five hundred and ninety-one, twenty point eight-nine gigabytes: roughly the equivalent of eighty-two rolls of film. This is the number of photographs I took in the course of my residency at Mersehead. In my work I will use maybe one tenth of that number, but almost certainly fewer – it is nearly always the case that many more photographs are taken than exhibited.

    Susan Sontag once remarked it seems…

  • What’s about 14th - 20th May 2016

    What’s about 14th - 20th May 2016

    With 29 lapwing pairs counted across the site, chicks continue to be seen across the reserve, although somewhat harder to spot as the grasses sedges and rushes have shot up in growth very fast in the last week or so. Oystercatcher chicks and moorhen chicks have been seen regularly from the visitor centre. Also the usual great display of birds on the feeder, yellowhammers, tree sparrow…

  • Recent Sightings 7th – 13th May

    It’s been a fruitful week!

    Our wader surveys have been going well, with 29 lapwing pairs counted. That’s up on last year’s 21 pairs. Not one, not two, but nine lapwing chicks have been spotted, scuttling about between grass tussocks. The number will only rise: just yesterday, four more lapwing-shaped balls of fluff were seen. When you visit, you may see a lapwing swooping over a field, calling in alarm…