At Radipole Lake it seems we have too much wildlife for the size of reserve we manage! This evening I had to take some things down to the visitor centre and the reserve was brimming with life. Hundreds of gulls and ducks out on the water, hirundines feeding overhead, a flock of Black tailed Godwits feeding in the mud. With all this going on another species resorted to using the car park!
Yellow Wagtails were dropping into the car park all evening. The real reason of course is to have a bath in the puddles before roosting and not because we have too much wildlife on the nature reserve! I wonder if it’s actually possible to have too much wildlife?
This autumn has been an incredible year for Yellow Wagtail at the Weymouth Wetlands. Every night at Radipole for the last three weeks we have had well over 100 Yellow Wagtails roosting. What’s more amazing is that fact the most evenings new birds will be roosting and not the ones from the previous night! Most I have seen at one time has been nearly 300 but just 10 miles down the coast at Abbotsbury, almost 1000 were seen roosting last week! This species has been in steep decline in the UK so hopefully this is a sign that they are starting to recover slightly but they have a long way to go.