Farlington

A male Garganey is the main attraction ath the moment. He was sat on the stream just down from the building today. Not an uncommon visitor, we had two in the autumn, but it will not hang around long i suspect so worth a look. A very nice little bird.

Ther is plenty about down there at the moment, the shoulder seasons always producing some good stuff. We are in the ‘ anything can happen’ part of the year with winter birds and migrants starting to come through. Short eared Owls, Merlins and Marsh Harrierhave all been seen on site recently making up a n ice bird of prey list with the usual Kestrel, Buzzards and Peregrines. 

Lots of waders still around. Casting an eye over the main marsh will pick up large numbers of Curlew and Lapwing. The latter of these are starting to display as well as Redshank which I heard calling away today. We did a Snipe count today in the Hay field, turning up 11 birds with 3 Jack Snipe, lower numbers than we expected (can be 50+ there). These can be regularly seen from the viewpoint , sitting on the area of cut reed around the lake.

We’ve been getting quite large numbers of Ringed Plover roosting on the Deeps at very high tides which is nice. The Deeps also sees a lot of Shelduck, Pintail and Wigeon as well as good numbers of Shoveler and Teal.

All in all, wildfowl numbers have been good this year compared to wader numbers which have been low. A reflection of the weather I think.

Swanwick/ Hookheath

The usual array of woodland birds with Redwing around still in large numbers.

St Clair’s

It seems quite hard not to go to this site and not see a Kingfisher. It will often be seen zooming a long the top end of the river near the bridge. There is regularly a Barn Owl and Grey Wagtails floating around as well.