A great variety of notable species this morning including Goshawk, White-fronted Geese, Little Stint and our star Bitterns!
The scrape and duck marsh are completely frozen, but around 600 Lapwing and 8 Dunlin were braving the ice. The deep lake remains unfrozen, with birds here including 2 Mandarin, Great Crested Grebe, 48 Shelduck, 78 Pochard and a Wigeon.
.
A male Goshawk was seen this morning, followed shortly by some great views of the Bittern walking between the reeds. Its been an excellent run of sightings the last few days, check out our Twitter feed for the photos shared by our visitors here. A flock of 150 Lapwing and 250 Dunlin were on the edge of the scrape, 2 Little Grebe and a Water Rail were on the pond and 160 White-fronted Geese were in the field from the hide, a slight increase on recent counts.
.
Eight Cranes were on the Tack Piece, with another 3 flying over heading past the Kingfisher Hide. Otherwise the Dumbles were very quiet with 225 Barnacle Geese, 2 Buzzard and a couple of Skylark the only birds present. Two Snipe appeared to be sunning themselves on the seawall in front of the hide, and 3 foxes were patrolling the saltmarsh. Out on the river were a selection of Curlew, Shelduck and 2 Black-tailed Godwit and at least 20 Reed Bunting were feeding along the river edge.
.
A count of 147 Bewick's Swans were on the Rushy this morning along with a Little Stint and a Redshank.