The changing seasons

After the excitement of a 'bit of autumn' yesterday, it was back to normal seasonal fare on the reserve today. There were still several yellow browed warblers about the place, I heard 3, but it was all about the pink footed geese on the grazing marsh today.

Numbers have been increasing over the last few weeks but it seemed that even more birds have recently arrived. On our last count over 13,000 were around the reserve but that number will surely be higher on the dawn count next week.

At this time of year many of the birds spend much of the day roosting on the grassland rather than heading inland to the fields to feed. They can be very restless and are often disturbed by birds of prey, feeding cattle and reserve management work but they never move far. Today I got the chance to spend a bit of time watching a small number of the birds.

Most of the breeding herons have now moved off. The spoonbills have headed down to the south coast, the little egrets are only roosting and disappearing out onto the saltmarshes during the day and only a couple of the great white egrets are still present. Thankfully they are hard to miss!!

There are still a few waders on the move with 4 green sandpipers feeding around the main flood today.