Hello, and welcome to another round of sightings from the weekend.
Today was our monthly wetland bird count (WeBS) which counts all the non-breeding water birds (waders, ducks, grebes, herons, terns) on the reserve.
Car Park / Fen Trail / East Trail
Over the weekend as migrant birds continue to arrive a walk around the car park, fen trail and meadow trail was worthwhile. In amongst the resident birds such as blue tits, great tits and greenfinches a flurry of willow warblers arrived, with a max count of 11 on Saturday afternoon and another pied flycatcher was around briefly on Friday morning. Today the distinctive ‘yaffle’ of a green woodpecker could be heard from the back of fen hide and there is a great spotted woodpecker calling around the visitor centre. As you walk along the east trial small flocks of house martins, swallows and the odd sand martin and swift were darting low along the hedgerows feeding on the flies. On Monday a single turtle dove flew along the east trail towards the fen hide area, but it hasn’t been seen since; they are incredibly elusive this year.
Turtle dove, Phil Gwilliam
Patsy’s / Reedbed
Over 100 little egrets have been counted coming into roost in the evenings, which will be quite a sight to see. During the day the two regular great white egrets continue to pop up across the reedbed and once again the bittern made a brief appearance for a couple of lucky visitors on Monday.
On the pool at Patsy’s there are small flocks of pochard and gadwall and tucked amongst them has been a female red-crested pochard.
Freshmarsh
Well these strong westerly winds have done their best to push all the water off the Freshmarsh over the weekend resulting in lots and lots of mud but also a drop in bird numbers for today’s WeBS counts. Nonetheless there were will still 15 wader species recorded on the Freshmarsh alone for today’s WeBS count including 55 ringed plovers, 172 avocets, 47 lapwing, 267 bar-tailed godwits, 127 black-tailed godwits, 138 knot, 80 dunlin, 2 spotted redshanks and a greenshank. A juvenile curlew sandpiper dropped in briefly on Sunday.
Black-tailed godwit, Phill Gwilliam
Tidal Marsh / saltmarsh
Tidal marsh has been topped up with sea water after this round of high tides, but the exposed areas are where you will find the grey plover, 67 were counted as part of today’s WeBS count along with 189 oystercatchers.
Listen out for the distinctive call of the whimbrel which have been heard on the saltmarsh and sighted on the beach. The saltmarshes have also hosted good numbers of curlews and little egrets.
That’s about it for this weekends roundup and with windy stormy weather to come who knows what will be around over the next few days.