The milder weather and southerly winds this week have delayed the arrival of winter visitors, though there was a brief brambling underneath the visitor centre feeders yesterday. In fact, there have been more late summer migrants passing through than new arrivals, with several hundred house martins and smaller numbers of swallows passing through during the week, as well as a lesser whitethroat and a few blackcaps in the North Bushes. Good numbers of hobbies remain, too, busily feeding on the dozens of common and ruddy darter dragonflies that remain on the wing.
One bonus of the largely dry weather is that our contractors have been able to progress well with the ongoing reprofiling of East Scrape and the construction of the new accessible path to East Hide. Both of these projects are due to finish around the end of October. There may be some brief closures of North Wall this week to allow for the concrete to be laid and set where the new path will leave the existing one, but this should cause minimum disruption to most visitors.
Our wardens have also been busy this week, starting the annual reed cutting programme by clearing the pools in front of Bittern Hide. They hope to do the same at the front of Island Mere Hide next week. This will, hopefully, make it easier to spot bitterns, water rails and kingfishers coming into the open to feed.
Island Mere has provided the best birdwatching for most visitors this week, with regular sightings of little and great egrets, bitterns, grey herons, little and great crested grebes, marsh harriers, buzzards, hobbies and bearded tits. The summering whooper swan remains, and the moulting duck flock has included pochard, tufted duck, coot and pintail.
The best views of bearded tits are usually in the mornings, both at Island Mere and along the trail between South Hide and the Sluice, with flocks of 20 or more often seen in the latter area. Several Cetti's warblers are also singing along the Sluice Track and North Wall.
Although numbers of birds on the Scrape are lower than usual for the time of year, due to both the mild weather and the ongoing work, the variety is still there with flocks of wigeon, gadwall, teal, shoveler and mallard on South Scrape, as well as various gulls and a dozen or more pied wagtails. Wader migration is usually over by mid October, but yesterday there were still a few avocets and single redshank and ruff. As soon as the wind swings to the north we'll expect a big arrival of lapwings too.
A walk along the dunes should produce stonechats, linnets and meadow pipits, and the odd large white, red admiral or clouded yellow butterfly, with red-throated divers and gannets often seen passing by offshore.
In the woods and scrubby parts of the reserve, look out for flocks of tits, which might include goldcrests, chiffchaffs and treecreepers as well as five species of tit (blue, great, coal, marsh and long-tailed). A few bullfinches are often in North Bushes, but the most obvious birds around the North Bushes are often goldfinches. In fact, a flock of up to 100 of these gorgeous songbirds are often feeding the edge of the Scrape, a twittering among the nearby bushes, and numbers have increased notably around the feeders this week, too.
The goldfinches certainly add a touch of colour to any walk, and colour is very much a theme of any visit during the autumn, with ripening berries in shades of red or purple, leaves sporting every shade of yellow, green or brown, and brightly coloured fungi popping up in the woodland leaf litter. Why not come along to enjoy and spectacular colourful autumn wander.