After a slightly dull week the sun has come out today to reveal a beautiful crisp frosty day, a great day to be out and about.
The cold weather movements that I have been predicting for the past few weeks have finally arrived. The continent has finally started to freeze up a little, which means that we have had an increase in our wildfowl numbers as well as many finches who have come to enjoy our slightly milder climate.
The most notable movements were seen at Buckenham and Cantley Marshes yesterday during a wildfowl count. 2125 lapwing along with 1037 golden plover and 16 ruff were all hunkering down together out of the wind with the soundtrack of 1480 wigeon whistling in the background. The highlight of the week was finding the 32 bean geese at Buckenham, these have also traveled from Scandinavia to escape the colder conditions, helped on by the North-Easterly wind. It is great to have these very rare geese back on site once again, we are the only site in England with a flock of the 'taiga' variety of bean goose. Also on the marshes were 3 water pipits, 11 white-fronted geese, 5 pink footed geese, 4 buzzards and a peregrine falcon looking majestic on a gate post. In the late afternoon a flock of 82 Skylarks passed overhead, this is surely the largest I have seen on the reserve and is another sure sign of a cold weather movement.
At Strumpshaw Fen this week we have seen a similar range of species to the past few weeks, with kingfishers showing along the river at reception and fen hides, bitterns have been seen frequently from reception as well as up to 17 marsh harriers gracefully enjoying playing in the wind. The otter family have also put in a couple of appearances at reception hide. A hen harrier was a good reward for a few early risers on Wednesday morning from fen hide, where bearded tots can also be heard pinging in the reedbed. There is a very small starling roost at the fen, numbering at 800 birds, although very small it is still very nice to see them swirling around in front of reception at dusk in a mini murmuration.
The path from Tower Hide along the Lackford run to the railway gate remains closed and the main riverbank path to tower hide is getting quite muddy due to very regular flooding of the river, however the woodland loop back along sandy wall and fen hide is all open and in good condition, so get your willies on and enjoy the beautiful winter scenes.
My predictions for the next week are that the wildfowl, thrush and finch numbers will continue to build thanks to the cold weather and Northerly airflow, however the south-west wind will slow the migration down from Tuesday onwards. I hope that redpolls and siskins to be around the feeders by the end of the week. This all very much depends on just how much the temperature on the continent continues to fall, a continuing downward trend will see an increase for us.