This week's wildlife
A summary of the last week on the reserve
It has been another busy week on the reserve with lots of essential winter work to complete, especially as we're already seeing the first signs of the upcoming breeding season!
This week the Reserve Team have continued with our annual coppicing and pollarding work, mainly around the South Lake. Part of this work has included coppicing willows and alders around the deep lake, felling them in to the water to create new roosting places for egrets and sheltered margins (photo) for loafing ducks, and hopefully safe nesting sites for both our Great Crested Grebe and Little Grebe, and fish refuges that also provide hunting opportunities for the grebe and herons. We finished coppicing a section of willow along the rhine at the back of the South Lake to remove some of the perches used by predators of the breeding waders, and then moved in to the roadside fields to clear up some of the storm damaged trees that blew over in the last couple of months.
Bewick's Swans update
The flock has remained at 80 birds this week, including three cygnets, for what looks like another poor breeding season for the species. We've been keeping a close eye on a female bird called Grinning, who was in a fight with the Whooper Swans last week. She spent a few days resting and did not move for the majority of the day. Thankfully in the last few days we've seen her becoming much more mobile, swimming aroud the pond with her partner Grinner, feeding and in the last few days she has also managed to take off and move to the Tack Piece. She still struggles with her left leg, but the signs are promising she will be OK again soon.
Other wildfowl
The Cackling Goose (photo) and Dark-bellied Brent Goose are still with the Canada Goose flock in the Bottom New Piece, but we haven't seen the Pink-footed Goose lately but this bird was spending time with the White-fronted Goose flock who are still using the Canal Ground field each day, so the Pinkie may still be present too.
Duck numbers remain steady and sadly low. Higher tides this week pushed the Wigeon on to the reserve off the river and a count produced 2726 birds between the Tack Piece, Dumbles, Top New Piece and those remaining on the river. A few more birds are likely to be at the north end of the reserve so we look to have around 3000 this winter. Some of our winter duck are also starting to get amorous with drake Teal and Pintail displaying for the attention of the females.
Waders
As I write this I have the fortune of looking out over the Rushy and towards the Tack Piece where thousands of Golden Plover, Lapwing and Dunlin are currently wheeling around - maybe a Peregrine or the Goshawk have passed through. The majority of the wader action is here on the Tack Piece this season, with the birds also joined by the Black-tailed Godwit flock who roost on the South Lake, and on the higher tides many of our Curlew will move here too from the Dumbles. This week we've also seen good numbers of Curlew using the roadside fields along the entrance road to the site, including several head-started birds from the project in 2019. We'll be keeping an eye out for these birds in the coming weeks and months to see whether others return, and whether any look to breed on the reserve.
We had two Avocets on the South Lake over the Christmas period, but this dropped to one bird through the start of January. The bird occasionally moved to the Rushy and could be seen on the webcam. Yesterday (Thursday 14th) two Avocet were present on the South Lake. Also yesterday our first Oystercatcher of the season was present, roosting on the riverbank at high tide.
We're sad that the centre can't remain open for our visitors, but we will continue working hard to keep the reserve a great place for wildlife, and then a safe place for our visitors when we are able to reopen in the future. Your support has been incredible through what have been a very challenging times and we can't thank you enough.
We will continue to update the blog every few days with our latest sightings, along with our Twitter feed. Don't forget you can also catch up with the Rushy on our webcam here. For now, stay safe and we hope to see you all again soon.
