It’s been a bad week for creatures of all kinds out there. The newly emerged Four-spotted Chaser Dragonflies must be wondering why they emerged in the middle of winter, and of course if there are no insects about, then there is no bird food, and even seed eating birds feed their chicks on insects.

We set out yesterday to undertake our monitoring of the central wet grassland with some trepidation of the effects…

It’s May which means as well as singing birds and woodland flowers, it’s time for Dragonflies, and in particular, the emergence of Four-spotted Chasers at the Dragonfly Ponds. But with the cold weather in April, things in the Dragonfly world are a bit late. So I was delighted on Tuesday, to find the nymph of a 4 spot crawling up a post near the ponds. 4 spot nymphs will crawl up to 5m away from the pond in an effort to…

You know when you’re out monitoring Lapwing nests and staring hard down binoculars and a telescope looking for chicks amongst tufts of grass, and you see an Avocet with 8 legs ?

Well after checking that Avocets aren’t in any way related to spiders, I deduced that there must something else under that Avocet with 6 legs, or more likely that there were 3 things under that Avocet with 2 legs each. And of course it…

It’s been an exciting week for migrant birds. This includes a Great Reed Warbler which is currently hiding in the reeds by the Allotment Pool. It generally sings (I use that term loosely) at dawn and dusk, although it grunted and squawked with it’s teenagers voice breaking throat at about 8.30 this morning while I desperately tried to glimpse it through the reeds.  It sounds like one of those Hollywood doctors…

We’ve had to wait longer than normal this spring, but Garganey have once again returned to Saltholme. Fewer than 100 pairs of Garganey breed in the UK, so our 5 pairs last year make this a special bird for us. We estimated that those 5 pairs produced 5 fledged young, which is not very productive. However, I use the term 'estimate' because the trouble with Garganey is that they are incredibly secretive.

Our nesting Lapwings are rather shy birds and leave the nest before we can get anywhere near them. This means we need to be sat in a vehicle to undertake nest monitoring. Birds are remarkably tolerant of people in a vehicle, which is in stark contrast to what happens when you open the car door.   On our central wet grassland, we use a Ford Ranger to drive around the perimeter of the anti-predator fence to check on the progress…

Visitors to Saltholme over the winter should have seen our Tern rafts moored on the shore of the Main Lake.  We keep them there for two reasons: Firstly, the storms over winter can produce lots of wave action on the lake, which can damage the rafts. Secondly, Black-headed Gulls return to nest in early April, a month before the Common Terns.  So we put the Tern rafts out during the first week in May once the Gulls have settled…

Now that spring is officially here, it’s time to start breeding bird surveys, and the first surveys I undertake each year are for breeding Water Rail.   Unlike most birds which can be either seen or heard quite easily, Water Rails are very secretive, spending most of their time deep in reeds. They do however, have a very noisy squeal, rather like a pig. The trick is to get the Water Rails to squeal on demand, so we…

There may have been signs of spring for a few weeks now:  lambs being born, queen bumble bees out and about, Great-crested Grebes eyeing each other up, Cowslips in flower, amorous Toads and a pair of Wigeon at the Wildlife Watchpoint that look very 'together', but for me spring is here when I hear the first singing Willow Warbler, and that moment came this morning as I fed the birds at the Visitor Centre.   There is…

Super Sheep, Baa-donna, Baa-rt Simpson, and Where's Woolly were some of the themed sheep we received from our North East knitters last weekend for Saltholme's Knit-a-Thon!

As some of you may be aware, our flock of sheep fell victim to dog attacks over the festive period to which our Knit-a-Thon helped raise funds to cover excess costs of these attacks. Not only did it engage people from all across the region…

Anyone who was up with the birds this morning may have managed to catch sight of an unusual visitor to Saltholme. Large and stately Cranes rarely pass through this part of the world and their numbers are in decline due to the loss of heavy manufacturing.

Weighing at an incredible 36 tonnes, and capable of lifting material up to 48m, a Liebherr box type torsion resistant Crane, made of high tensile fine grained structural…

Wetland birds love an open vista, they don’t like trees or shrubs which provide predators with perches or conceal them.   In order to make wetland birds feel more at home, and get them closer to Dorman’s Hide so you can see them, we’ve cleared a few patches of bramble from the area near the hide.  

The next day, there were immediate benefits with a few Pintail and Curlew closer to the hide.  But, other…

Hello,

Eagle eyed visitors to the reserve may have observed our estate team out and about cutting bramble around Saltholme East and Dormans Pool. The aim of the work has been to provide safer foraging conditions for our cautious wetland birds. Thick bramble cover can provide the perfect place for a fox to lay low and the birds know this, with the majority of species preferring to feed out in the open where the probability…

At the end of last week, you may have seen a strange, tracked, tank-like vehicle working in amongst some of our reedbeds.  Or you may have just seen what looked like people floating through the reed as that tracked vehicle was obscured by the height of the reed itself.

Those people were in fact riding on a ‘Truxor’.  We hired one to help us manage the reedbed in front of the Haverton viewpoint, one of our oldest…

Today is a special day for Gloria, our female Smew. For today, it is exactly 6 months since she first appeared here. Smew are a tree hole breeding diving duck that breed in Scandinavia and Russia. Less than 200 birds winter here and they generally arrive on inland water bodies in very cold conditions. So Gloria’s arrival in August last year was something of a surprise. At that time, she should have been moulting and flightless…

When it is a mono draft ventilation housing.

Or when it is no longer in an upright position.

This particular mono draft ventilation housing used to be held on with lots of bolts, which have sheared in the recent storms, leaving one remaining.  Of course this means the whole thing is in a rather perilous state, and we've had to close off reception just in case the rope that is securing the thing gives and it comes…

In case you haven't noticed, it's a tad windy.  I've just been around the reserve to open hides and feed the birds, water voles and mice this morning in the gator, as there was no way I was going to attempt it on my bike.  All the waterfowl are hiding where they can, mainly behind reeds.  The only species brave enough to venture out into open water seem to be the Goldeneye. 

One of our female Goldeneye, by Mark…

Look carefully as you come up the main drive to the car park.  There is a Short-eared Owl currently hunting along either side of the drive, around the workshop, over the Discovery Zone and in front of the Wildlife Watchpoint Hide. 

Short-eared Owl by Lockhart Horsburgh

These are birds that breed on open uplands and move to marshes and coastal grasslands in winter, but the birds that winter here tend to have arrived from…

You may notice Tree Sparrows at Saltholme with red colour rings and white lettering. The rings have been fitted by Chris Brown and Eric Wood from Tees Ringing Group, as part of their Ringing Adults for Survival Scheme (RAS). The young birds are ringed in the nestboxes, so they can be monitored when they fledge. We want to know two things: how many of the young birds survive to adults, and how many of them stay within…

The dog attacks and ensuing trauma over the festive period could have been much more problematic to deal with, if not for the help we had from our volunteers. Dealing with dead and injured animals is difficult and incredibly time consuming, and although many people were involved in the aftermath of the attacks, we are extremely grateful to two of our vols in particular: Cate Taylor and Ellie Stevenson, both of whom give…

Our recent wetland bird count revealed the numbers of birds taking advantage of our managed habitats.  We currently have over 1,500 Wigeon grazing on the short grass around the water bodies.  493 Teal are searching among the secluded pool edges, a thousand Lapwing and 215 Curlew are taking advantage of the very wet grasslands and a single Green-winged Teal is hiding from us on Back Saltholme.  6 Goldeneye have joined us for…

It's been a while since we had a Water Vole feeding at the Watchpoint Hide on the feeding table, which is protected by a cage.  The last one was predated by a Heron in April.  Before that, a Weasel managed to get into the cage during the drought in summer 2014.  Since then, we've done a lot of work to try and prevent predation of Water Voles, including digging a moat around the table, but there is little we can do about…

During much of October and November, Adam and the volunteers were out on the wet grassland fixing all the leaky sluices.  And then it rained.....................a lot.

This aerial photo was taken after some of the recent rain.   The network of shallow feeder channels can be seen clearly.  These channels help move the water to all areas of the grassland, and also provide feeding areas for lapwing chicks in the spring and…

On Thursday, the sun shone as we embarked on our annual Harvest Mouse nest survey along the Wildlife Watchpoint bund and the rank grassland along the northern edge of the Meadow.  This involves a fingertip search to find the ball shaped nests of Harvest Mice as they leave the reedbeds in the autumn to head for warmer climes of tussocky grassland.  However, it's not that effective as a survey method.  We know we have…