After a few years of saying, ‘this will be the year’, we can confirm that little egrets are breeding at Middleton! A common sight on the reserve all year round, and with a roost of 40 plus in the Winter, 2016 looked promising. With breeding plumaged birds hanging around in the spring and pairs seen in the heronry we had our fingers crossed. With the recent heavy rains, there was a risk the shear weight of water could have knocked the nest out of the tree and with it the chicks. Another risk was the chicks become too soaked and get too cold but luck was with us and now they are big enough to be out of trouble and can climb to safety if needs be. We will continue to monitor this very exciting development for the reserve - always a buzz to have a new breeding species!!
Little egret by F.Mosey
Keeping with the ‘heron’ theme, we keep seeing a bittern in the reedbed areas. All the sightings have been of it flying from one part of the reedbed to the other. If you spend a bit of time scanning over fishers mill then there is a chance you might catch it flying across – the gulls are a good warning system for anything big flying around the site!
Lurking around the reedbeds we have seen a brown form (sometimes known as hepatic) cuckoo. This rarer colouration means some females appear rufous brown in colour rather than the usual grey. She has been seen in the reedbeds on Fishers Mill, Dosthill and Jubilee. We have had at least 2 males this year putting on a good show, with one occupying the southern part of the reserve and the other having north east part. When they met in the middle it was always a bit of a show down!
There have been more hobbys seen on the wetlands now the dragonflies are more abundant. They can be quite active between the showers we’ve been having – I’ve had ace views of them hunting over Fisher’s Mill recently. Common terns are building in number on the jubilee wetlands – most likely adults which have failed to breed. With the flooding we’ve had it’s marooned small fish in tyre ruts and puddles and I was watching a tern hovering over these ruts deciding whether it was deep enough to dive for the fish! It decided against it and promptly caught a fish in the reedbed pool!
June is the month when the waders start to trickle south from their arctic breeding rounds. So far we have had black-tailed godwits, dunlin and green sandpiper feeding on the wetlands. No doubt there will be more to come as the summer/autumn progresses.
Ringlets, meadow browns, large and small skippers have popped up in number this week. The long grass is perfect for these species – the play meadow can be awash with them in July. The long grass along the wetlands is also a good spot for chimney sweeper moths. These little sooty moths with white wing tips can be really abundant tend to sit for photos so even someone like me who only really takes pictures with her phone has a chance of some sort of shot!
Chimney sweeper by K.Thorpe
Dragonflies and damselflies are all over the place. Banded demoiselles, azure, common blue, blue-tailed damselflies are common everywhere. The 2 pools on the land between fishers mill and southern meadow (which we call the EA ponds) have red-eyed damselfly. Southern hawker, emperor, broad-bodied and four-spot chaser, black-tailed skimmer and common darter are all out now. One damselfly we don’t see much of is the emerald damselfly. If you have seen them or any records let us know as they are under-recorded on the surveys.
Four-spotted chaser by Bob Cooper