Autumn. A time of change. Millions of birds are on the move, and North Warren's coastal location makes it an ideal place to find some of them.
One of the best places for migrants at North Warren is close to the reserve boundary on the old caravan site at Thorpeness - a short walk north from the village along the cliffs. The scrub here regularly attracts rare visitors. Highlights so far this autumn have included wryneck and greenish warbler, as well as many of the commoner migrants - pied and spotted flycatchers, common and lesser whitethroats and various other warblers. This is also a good place to scan the sea for passing skuas - mainly arctic and great - gannets, terns and wading birds. The first brent geese will be heading south any day too.
whitethroat by Jon Evans
The reserve itself is still fairly quiet. Water levels remain low, but the pools on south marsh are attracting a few waders - black-tailed godwits, curlews, redshanks, the odd green or common sandpiper. Wheatears and whinchats may be spotted along the beach, and areas of scrub along the old railway line are great for seeing flocks of long-tailed tits, goldfinches and linnets.
There's still plenty of late insects around on sunny days, including migrant hawker, common and ruddy dadrter dragonflies, red admirals, large and small white butterrflies and various hoverflies. Talking of insects, the summer survey of antlions found an excellent total of almost 4000 larval pits - a big increase on last year.
The late summer months are a busy time for wardens at North Warren. They've spent many hours cutting, raking and buring fen vegetation around the edge of the reedbed or topping the fields with a tractor-mounted mower to improve grazing conditions for winter ducks and geese. On some of the higher fields alongside the marshes they've had assitance from our herd of Exmoor ponies, while a local grazier's cattle reamin on the marshes. If you've been to North Warren recently you might have noticed a new cattle corral, replacing the old one close to the tumbledown sluice cottage. This will make it easier for us to remove cattle later in the winter.