• It's behind you!

    We received this picture from Rik Nicholls which shows one of our bitterns testing out the path around the buddleia loop. It was taken during the cold snap over Christmas when there were up to 5 Bittern present on the reserve.  The structure in the background is the viewing shelter which is usually where you would look for bitterns. I wonder if anyone was in the shelter when the photo was taken?

    Since the cold Bitterns…

  • Grubby Duck

    Staff and volunteers in the Visitor Centre have fielded a few queries in recent days about a male pochard (pictured below) with a facial abnormality. Rather than the typical coppery chestnut this individual's head had a muddy colouration - and for good reason...

    Ailing pochard? Photograph by Edward Flatters.

    Someone offered that it was losing feathers or suffering from a fungal infection. Happily for the pochard and…

  • Rethink - our secret army.

    Yesterday we held the first of our fortnightly work parties of 2011 with the mental health charity Rethink .  These regular gatherings have had an understated but hugely significant impact on the management of these reserves, (and consequently for the reserves' wildlife) since we began working in cohorts in 2005. Before this point labour intensive and time devouring tasks were the sole preserve of the warden, estate worker…

  • Where are our beardies?

    Since the dawn of the 2011 one of the characteristic sights and sounds of our reedbeds has been ominously absent; namely the chiming call and unmistakable plumage of our bearded tits. Like many of our wetland birds bearded tit numbers plummeted with the wide scale drainage of fens and wetland in the past 200 years. As it became scarcer its value to egg collectors increased, further hastening its decline.

    Although the numbers…

  • Eli Echo visits Radipole

    If anyone read the Dorset Echo yesterday you might have noticed a rather odd looking Lion interacting with our ducks. It was of course Eli Echo the mascot of the Dorset Echo which is the local daily news paper. This is a picture of the visitor staff present on the day enjoying the company of Eli.

    You may notice Dan feeding the ducks something other than bread. Another newspaper article that you might have seen was…

  • A Grand Tradition.

     

    The New Year has seen the commencement of reed cutting on Radipole Lake which comprises a major component of our winter habitat management on the reserve. Reed is cut rotationally which provides manifold benefits to the sites biodiversity. Conservation reed cutting provides differing age structures within the fabric of the reed which provides the niche requirements of reed dwellers. An added benifit is that by removing…
  • Lodmoor Wader Assemblage.

    Lodmoor, since the dawning of the New Year, has held a nice wader assemblage with at least eight species present. Our far from home long-billed dowitcher has returned from the fleet as the belated thaw has made feeding once more a possibility. Perhaps most notable after our American guest is the wonderfully elegant avocet which has been in situ for a day or two. Although Poole Harbour and Exe Estuary boast sizable wintering…

  • Bengal Tiger Substitute.

    Friend of the Weymouth Wetlands, naturalist and top notch camera boffin Pete Coe had his plans to visit the Sub-Continent for the festive period put on ice (literally - due to the 'snow chaos'). However, undeterred Pete ventured to his local patch in the hope of capturing a glimpse of a streaky brown and black striped predator and Radipole duly obliged - it may not have been the Tiger that India may have supplied…
  • The Waxwing have landed.

    After a patient wait Waxwings have finally arrived in Weymouth with 9 birds seen flying from the hospital in Monmouth Avenue towards Lodmoor just moments ago. They are one of the most colourful, characterful avian visitors to these Isles and it is relatively unusual for them to move this far south. Although possessing the colours and plumage one would associate with the tropics, waxwings actually resident to the coniferous…

  • Winter Thrushes.

    The recent cold snap has promoted an influx of thrush species to the reserves and surrounding countryside. Movements of blackbirds and song thrush have seen the local population temporarily expand and northerly species the redwing and fieldfare have dramatically increased in the past week. The main driver of this movement is food related. With the ground frozen they have difficulties finding invertebrates and so rely…

  • Feeding time at the Lake...

    For the second consecutive winter the harshness of the weather has forced us to take steps to help ensure that some of our illustrious visitors have a fighting chance of surviving the cold. The majority of our ditch and lake edges have been frozen solid for many days thus removing fishing rights for bittern and others. As with all the prime RSPB bittern wintering sites we have commenced pre-dawn supplementary feeding missions…

  • tracks and signs

    We have been fortunate to have some incredible otter sightings over the past fortnight, including a mother with cubs and an array of ones and two's making for the ‘otteriest’ period on Radipole that anyone can remember - quite possibly ever. It is obvious that otters are very active over the entire reserve as we are finding spraint and prints over a vast span - so it can be luck of the draw when it comes…

  • Away Day

    Will and I enjoyed a day away from the wetlands yesterday and headed east to Sopley Common. The duel purposes of this were to provide Will some felling practice in advance of his chainsaw assessment and allow me to freshen up my felling skills, as pines so differ from the willows that dominate on our home turf. The Common is a Dorset Wildlife Trust site but the heathland restoration works have been contracted to the RSPB…

  • Blasé about Bitterns

    When you see something several times a day it’s easy to become blasé about them. Bittern sightings have been going through the roof recently which led me to ask the question to colleagues, can you get blasé about bitterns? This was something I never thought I’d ask but I was assured that it’s impossible and I tend to agree.
    Yesterday I personally managed about 5 views of bittern including…
  • The Mundane and the Magnificent...

     

    ...(aka Bittern Galore!)

    Friday afternoons are traditionally a bit of a house keeping day - tidying, litter picking and the like and consequently lack some of the romance and allure of active conservation management. However, as alluded to in an earlier blog, the mundane and the magical can and do occasionally meet and have the capacity to make the most humdrum task memorable as I hope the following will illustrate.

  • Three otters

    Will and I have just returned from the reserve in a state of sheer elation having seen no fewer than three otters for a duration of about 5 minutes. Neither of us felt that it would be right to follow them and possibly cause distress so we left them to it as they pootled up river - you cannot really measure such exquisite encounters in terms of minutes anyway.

    The really wonderful thing is that at least one of them appeared…

  • Pollarding

    Had a few queries about the pollarding that is taking place around the paths and pasture at the north of Radipole. Pollarding is a means of managing trees, willows being a prime example, that brings a number of benefits to the reserve, its wildlife and its visitors. From the trees perspective it promotes longer life as it takes the weight out of the limbs, preventing cracking or branch failure and consequently rot. It…

  • Great White Hope

    After three days laid low by an oppressive bout of man flu I ventured, for the first time, into the frozen hinterland, (to replace the hydraulic arm in one of the VC scope stands were you wondering) only to be graced by a great white egret within my first few hundred steps. It emerged from the reeds just south of the concrete bridge, just a few feet away and was duly recorded by Luke our resident lens-man.

    Not wishing…

  • Utterly Ottery Antics

    Sunday morning last, our esteemed site manager Nick T was showing local birder Bob Ford the ropes regarding volunteering as an auxiliary hide opener/ closer (familiarity with padlock use essential, binocular use desirable). Before Nick's arrival Bob had witnessed an otter catch, land and partially consume a fish in what would have been plain view of the VC.  Luckily for Nick this was an unnaturally obliging otter and…

  • Lapland

     

    The past 24 hours has seen Lodmoor transformed into Lapland or rather Lapwing land. Give or take 500 of these beautiful and charismatic  waders had taken up residence interspersed with the occasional close relative the golden plover, (nowadays a very scarce winter visitor to the moor) with dunlin, black-tailed godwits, snipe and the dowitcher completing a nice wader assemblage. There were quite large congregations of…

  • Winter Wonderland Part II

    Nick mentioned some of the scarcities from yesterdays birding bonanza such as the Smew, 8 Goosander (including a drake), 5 Woodlark and 2 Bittern. But he didn't mention some of the real highlights. Best of all was the shear numbers of birds passing overhead. Remarkably the highest count of the day was over 4000 Skylark! Will and myself spent most of the day watching the skies counting birds. Lapwing numbers were also into…

  • Weymouth Wetlands Winter Wonderland

    Insomnia forced me from my bed at an ungodly hour and I was immediately aware of an eerie stillness without. Leaping forth with uncommon enthusiasm a peep through the curtains revealed a carpet of white and - unusually for Weymouth - it was a veritable pure wool shag pile of white rather than a tatty threadbare rug that our dustings mostly resemble. This was in some way compensation for being awake at 4.30 am and the prospect…

  • USA or Lodmoor??

    Our wintering Long billed Dowitcher has attracted quite a bit of attention since its arrival on the 8th November and some great photos have been taken. One good example is one taken by Andrew Jordan.

     

    It’s supposed to be wintering in the United States and central America but this one has chosen Lodmoor instead. Every winter one or two Long billed Dowitchers spend the winter. A few winters ago the Exe Estuary had one…

  • Window Watching

    With all this cold weather about you may not want to venture out too far. So I spent an hour this afternoon having a look at what wildlife was on offer around our lovely warm visitor centre at Radipole Lake. Our 'tame' Water Rail has been spending pretty much the whole day outside the visitor centre windows feeding on dropped seed from the bird feeders. But seed isn't the only food item it’s been eating......…

  • Britain's new rarity hotspot

    Forget Blackney point, Fair Isle, Cape Clear for your rare birds, Weymouth was the place to be this morning. Our Long billed Dowitcher has decided that Lodmoor is a nice place to spend the winter and joining it this morning was a Great White Egret. Very nice indeed. Then the real highlight of the morning appeared standing on the ice outside the visitor centre, a Glossy Ibis.

    The last Glossy Ibis we had on our Weymouth…