The highlight of a visit to The Lodge at the moment has to be the fabulous fly agaric toadstools. This autumn's been a really good one for fungi of all sorts, but these red and white spotty beauties are easier to spot than most. Look carefully in the woodland near the hide.

Fly agaric. Photo by Katie Fuller

A grey wagtail has been seen around the main buildings this week. Though they breed near to running water and mainly in upland areas, at this time of year, these charming birds head to lower altitudes and can often be seen and heard around built-up areas. 

Grey wagtails are attracted to water, be it streams, sewage works, weirs or little garden ponds! Sometimes they are confused with yellow wagtails, which are all in Africa by this time of year.

Late autumn is also one of the best times to see woodcocks. Though they breed in woodlands throughout much of the UK, we're joined by large numbers of woodcocks from Scandinavia and Russia. So when you're walking around the reserve, you might bump into one of these chunky, brown wading birds. 

They can fly up from the leaf litter with quite a start (and make you jump!), but prefer to sit tight and hope to avoid detection with their impressive 'cryptic' camouflaged plumage.

It's not just birds that hide in the leaves, of course... A stoat was seen last week not far from the drive, rustling around. These slinky mammals are fierce predators, quite happy to tackle rabbits and other prey. Grey squirrels are also busy searching out any remaining acorns and sweet chestnuts in the woodland, too.

As the weather's still quite mild and the ground soft, feeding on worms and other creatures in the soil will still be easy for fieldfares, redwings and mistle thrushes. Look out for flocks of them on Sandy Ridge, from the new trail. When the ground gets frozen they'll be forced to focus on berries.

Probably the most colourful sighting was a ring-necked parakeet which flew across Sandy Warren. Though these noisy parrots are getting very common in London (which is not that far away, of course), they have yet to spread to Bedfordshire. So this one is much more likely to have been an escapee from somebody's aviary...