Hello All
I hope you have managed to get out and about this afternoon to enjoy the lovely spring sunshine.
It is well worth a visit to Rye Meads if you do get out as there is defiantly a spring feel in the air. There are beutiful white snow drops and cheery yellow crocus in bloom around the visitor centre, chiff chaff, cettis and reed bunting singing and the BIG news is a pair of KINGFISHERS investingating the nest bank at the kingfisher hide, as i write. Visitors today have been rewarded with lovely views of the pair perched around the nest bank and investigating the largest hole at the left hand end of the middle row. We have even got some great views on the camera in the visitor centre. Marvelous!
Primrose
Other sightings today have included 40+ snipe from the gadwall hide, these birds can be a bit tricky to catch up with as they hide in amongst the clumps of reeds and then come out to feed, so timing is key. There are still good numbers of lapwing using this area along with shelduck, shoveler and gadwall. The meadow is still flooded, though water levels have definatly gone down from there peak and lots of our usual winter waterfowl are enjoying this new feature along with the occasional extra visitor in the form of a male pintail or a couple of wigeon. The black headed gulls are all starting to get the colour in their heads and hanging around the lagoon where we put the rafts (a job for us in early march). Along the trails today there have been goldfinch and bullfinch and kestrel hovering around the visitor centre.
Work is continuing on the construction of the new kingfihser bank visible from the Draper hide and we have finished off the base today with a cap of concrete, we now get to the key part of actually building the areas where the kingfishers will nest! The kingfishers like to nest quite high above the water line and as the waterlevels in this area can fluctuate 90cm from lowest summer levels to highest winter levels we have to have a quite tall base to ensure the nesting area does not flood. This bank is being built to a new design that we are hoping will look more natural, fingers crossed. We are going to have a combination of artifical holes (with a hope for future nest cames!) and blocks of sand for the kingfishers to excavate themselves. We are also constructiong a bat hibernaculum on the back of the nesting bank in the hope of attracting bats such as daubentons to hibernate here in the winter. I have to give a great big shout out to all the work party volunteers as they have been beavering away in gooey mud and clay in this appaling weather putting in wall footings and building wallls sometimes under water! So a great big THANKYOU to all of them for all their hard work in less that stellar condtions. We just hope the kingfishers appreciate it!!!
Thaks
Vicky