Hello
Well its another lovely sunny autumn day and i have just returned from a wonder round the reserve (maybe i should have made that sound a bit more like work). It seems to be a wigeon day today with 1 from the draper hide, 15 from gadwall hide and 11 from tern hide, pretty good for us. Other counts included 306 coot, 96 shoveler, 146 teal, 157 gadwall and 64 lapwing. Snipe numbers are a bit down from the heddy peaks of 92 with 26 on lagoon1, 2 on the draper and 2 in the meadow (though i am sure there are plenty more hidden away in the vegetation in both these last two locations). Also around were sparrow hawk, grey wagtail, jay (which have returned to site in the last week or so), cettis warbler, kestrel, blackcap, common gull, buzzard, chiff chaff, grey heron, little grebe and green sandpiper. I did spend some time in the ashby hide looking for the water rail which reached a peak count of 6 on tuesday and 3 later in the week but sadly dipped on these and the one that has been showing regulalry to the left of the tern hide.
This week the work parties have started to apply wood treatment to the kingfisher hide and continued cutting views in to the reedbed on the lee marsh. We have also started to cut the vegetation on the draper area. Normally we clear sections of the vegetation to open up views in to the reedebd however this year we are cutting all the vegetation on the front half in order to ensure it is clear of obstructions for a levelling survey we are having carried out in October. This survey will help us when the contractor is on site in November to ensure that we landscape the ground material to the right heights to obtain optimal scrape areas as the water levels are lowered. So an exciting project for this winter.
Being out with the work parties this week also offered plenty of sightings of dragonfly. Especially on Tuesady when we were working around the culvert there were plenty of common darters (which were also around today), brown hawker and migrant hawker which were also laying eggs in the bullrush, these were joined by a lone blue tailed damselfy and a shoal of 22+ perch in the ring ditch. The watervole are still munching through the apples on the platform which is getting topped up regularly and are showing well.
A sure sign of autumn, clumps of fungi have started appearing along the trails. I am afriad fungi are one of those things i never seemt to have the time to learn but we do have a variety and i shall get some photos to share with you on a later post.
Nearly forgot to let you now we have a baby buffalo on the meadow again. The Farmer came and collected the earlier cows and calfs before work on the corral extension started, but it is nice to have a tiny addition to the herd for a while, you can view the meadow from the lapwing hide.
Get out and enjoy the lovely autumn weather.
vicky