Wednesday 30th March 2016

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Great day to be alive....


The weather this morning was cool and blustery and after a heavy shower at 8am the rest of the day turned out to be one of the best so far.

I checked the camera trap in the reed bed, and although no Otters were on film there was a rear view of a Badger, a Meadow Pipit and a full on male Pheasant ( there are three Pheasants living in the marsh which is of courser the natural home to these birds). I can't get the video to upload and play in the blog but I will keep trying.


I then updated the information in the shelter and had a Barn Swallow cross my path. Whilst talking with a visitor a redshank flew in from the beach and started to display flight over one of the grazing fields!! magic.

As if that wasn't enough whilst talking to Adam Dare, one of the local birders, and his wife a flock of c175 Golden Plover flew across the reserve quite low, the reason was soon revealed to be the Peregrine which was in hot pursuit and looked like it had made a kill of one of the birds so c174 now!

With a small passage of Barn Swallows and a Northern Wheatear on the dunes it was a really great morning and all before 10am.

The rest of the day was spent on tasks including fixing another potential breach in the cattle fence...
...shall we drive over to get the fence post?, its too boggy says Veronica so we walk over
solid ground for 1/4 of a mile pick up the fence posts and walk back 1/4 mile...!

That should hold them...
Work on the stile into our "control of dogs" field will have to wait (wrong saw), then we went off to look at the lakes in the Millennium Coastal Park to check on the litter situation and any fishing activity.


At just one lake we picked three bags of plastic between us a swell as a full bag of landfill waste, why would anglers want to sit in trash?

There was no fishing activity on any of the four lakes  but we did find a dead fish looking suspiciously like the invasive non-native Top-mouth Gudgeon, we know this is in one of the lakes but thought the others were clear....


possibly a Top-mouth Gudgeon





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