Happy Easter everyone!
Hope you are all well.
Other the last couple of days we've had some lovely wildlife sightings that I wanted to share with you.
We've had some lovely views of waders such as: redshank, greenshank, oystercatcher, little ringed plover, curlew, and lapwing! We had our first lapwing chick hatch on Theusday 17 April! It's looking like this will be a good year for lapwings!
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Little grebe at it's nest by Rachael Webb It's been good for the water birds too - we having good sightings of things like gadwall, mallard, pochard, shoveler, tufted duck, shelduck, coot, moorhen, grey heron, little egret, and little grebe.
We even had a red-breasted merganser on 17 April - have a look at this: Red-breasted merganser on the river by John Daly
Earlier today we spotted some harbour porpoises on the river too!
On Good Friday we had a red kite, and osprey using thermals over the reserve (which was fabulous to see!), but we've also had other birds of prey like buzzard, marsh harrier, hobby, and kestrel!
Buzzard Jerry Hoare
The little birds have been showing nicely too - cettis, grasshopper, sedge and reed warbler, chiffchaff, blackcap, white throat, wheatear, skylark, bearded tit, yellow wagtail (flew over the shooting butts hide) and a ring ouzel (which was seen flying over from the dragonfly pools over the sea wall).
It's been nice to see the swallows, swift, and house and sand martins wizzing over the reserve too!
The kingfishers this morning have been seen removing egg shells from the nesting bank - so it looks like our first babies have hatched!