Early Summer at Blacktoft

 Since my last blog I have done 4 spells of duty at Blacktoft. Although we are supposed to be in summer the weather has been very un summery!. It has often been wet and cold, we will have to wait and see what affect that this has had on the birds trying to raise young.

The male ducks, like this shoveler are slowly going into eclipse plumage. Over the past few weeks we have been getting more visitors to the reserve who are fairly new to bird watching. Sorting out the brown ducks will prove to be a challenge for them.

Warblers such as whitethroats are busy collecting food to feed young

Meanwhile a chiffchaff continues to sing

Young magpies follow their parents about, begging for food

One morning a young hare was on the footpath leading towards 1st hide.

It ran off a short distance then hid behind this post!

A lack of butterflies and dragon flies due to the cold weather and as the insects have been close to the water surface, swifts, house and sand martins have been feeding at very low levels, which gave me a chance to observe them without having to look upwards. Swallows were hunting over the vegetation alongside the footpaths and would suddenly serve to avoid colliding with you.

We have had 2 great white egrets on site which has given visitors an opportunity to see them, little egrets, grey heron, bittern and spoon bill on one visit.

We seem to get different birds each day. The ones with the rings on were from Holland.

Let's hope that the weather improves over the next month or so. It wont be long before we are seeing birds such as green sandpipers on their return from the far north.