Hello all

News you will all be interested  in! The Kingfishers are very active feeding young of the second brood. A few days ago they were joined by another pair which did not go down well, after a bit of a ruckus, our pair saw off the competition. Yesterday all was back to normal with the adults active despite the heat,bringing fish back very regularly and they even found time to think about the third brood and were investigating the burrow used for the first brood and mating, so all looks good for the third brood.  The second brood hatched on 29 June so we are looking at fledgling 23-25 July.

Note: we are planning another VIP kingfisher morning for Saturday 21 July, we have not posted it on the rye meads events page yet or social media, but if you would like to book one of the 8 spaces please ring the reserve.

Butterflies seem to be benefiting from this prolonged hot spell with sightings increasing now after the poor numbers in early summer due to the spell of bad weather. Dragonflies are also showing well, with hairy, four spotted chaser, Norfolk or green eyed hawker, and banded demosielle,reported.

The kestrels nesting in the car park fledged 2 young, pochard broods started emerging in June and an amazing  294 pairs of Black-headed Gulls bred on the reserve. Unfortunately, despite plenty of space avaliable for more pairs, the number of common tern pairs dipped to 16 this year (from 26 pairs last year).

We had a nice showing of longhorn beetles during June with golden-bloomed grey longhorn beetle, wasp beetle, musk beetle, black-and-yellow longhorn beetle and four-banded longhorn beetle. We were also lucky to find, lurking in the wildlife garden a yellow crab spider, amazing!

June saw the return of some species that do not breed with us, teal and green sandpiper, and these early returners were joined for the day on 2 July by a couple of passage birds in the form of a  black-tailed godwit and little ringed plover both moving through.

So as you can see there is plenty going on. We hope to see you soon.

Thank you