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Ian Barthorpe

With the return of warmer sunny weather today, the reserve has been alive with buzzing, flitting, chasing and feeding insects. A quick walk this afternoon revealed a superb variety of butterflies, damselflies, dragonflies, hoverflies and bumblebees.

Possibly the best place to watch dragonflies and damselflies at the moment is in the ditch just before you reach Wildlife Lookout (when walking from South Belt Crossroads). Ten minutes stood here produced excellent views of my first emerald damselflies of the year, plus all of our blue damselfly species - common blue, azure, variable and blue-tailed. A couple of late hairy dragonflies were patrolling the ditch, while male black-tailed skimmers rested on the path. This ditch is also a great place to see sticklebacks and roach - two of our commonest fish species.

Probably the most numerous dragonfly on the wing at the moment is the four-spotted chaser, though these are best found around brambles in woodland clearings, where lots of smaller insects provide ample prey. Look out too for Norfolk dragonflies in these areas.

Four-spotted chaser by Ian Barthorpe

These bramble bushes are also good places to look for butterflies. Speckled woods were numerous today, and the first meadow brown was near Bittern Hide. Lots of pristine red admirals are on the wing - possibly newly emerged locally rather than recent arrivals from the continent. The painted ladies are likely to be migrants though. Other butterflies included peacock and large white, while some visitors have been able to see green hairstreaks and a hummingbird hawkmoth was found in the dunes - another new arrival.

Painted lady by Ian Barthorpe - a species to look out for in coming weeks

The bramble flowers are also attracting a good variety of bees and flies. Now, I'm not an expert on the many different species, but I was pleased to see and photograph this very distinctive hoverfly that goes by the name of Volucella pellucens.

Volucella pellucens on bramble

Of course, with all these insects around it's not a surprise that insect-eating birds featured high on today's sightings list. Hobbies continue to perform spectacularly well at Bittern Hide (and elsewhere over the reedbed), but the star for those lucky enough to see it was a BEE-EATER. This stunningly beautiful visitor was unusually obliging (they usually just pass quickly through). First spotted over the sluice it was relocated perched in dead trees north of the North Wall late morning. Although distant, a large crowd of staff, volunteers and visitors soon gathered to see what was, for many, their first bee-eater. It stayed in the area for about half an hour before flying low over the visitor centre and car park, then returning south over the visitor centre a little while later. Will it be seen again?

Bee-eater by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com). This bird was photographed in County Durham in 2002 when a pair nested - the only one I had previously seen in the UK.

Elsewhere, highlights from the last few days include an Arctic tern among the 130 pairs of common terns on the Scrape, up to four Mediterranean and six little gulls, two spotted redshanks, eight knot and a curlew sandpiper on the Scrape, at least one little ringed plover, and about avocet chicks. Bitterns, bearded and marsh harriers remain in the reedbeds, and flocks of tits and finches in the woods. 

Oh, and Spineless Si is still fanning is nest at Island Mere, where you can now also see lots of stickleback fry from the various nests below the boardwalk!