Rain bringing more birds in

This week has brought 5" of rain! This has reopened many of our scrapes, and 600 golden plover can be seen mingling with lapwing.

This week has seen over 5 inches of rain fall on the reserve, which has reopened many of our scrapes, at last! This is really exciting as many more birds are making the short jump from the shores of the Solway Firth up onto our reserve. This helps us better track the arriving migrants, and gives our visitors a wonderful view of the birds at close quarters.

Especially exciting is the numbers of birds now visible from avenue tower, with the two nearest fields harbouring 2000 teal, 100 wigeon and often a few hundred pintail. One field has very recently been cropped, and this habitat is favoured by golden plover and lapwings, of which we counted 600 and 400 respectively on sunday. The week's weather has brought some stunning soft light, and a wing of golden plovers glittering in these warm hues is remarkable. Similarly, small murmurations of starlings, perhaps numbering up to 1000 birds, have been dancing across the skies.

Also notable is the regular visit of an otter or two, usually late morning on our whooper pond. We have had three sightings this weeks, and our resident volunteer photographer Alex Hillier captured some lovely images that you can see on our facebook page.

Finally, it's worth noting that there is a great egret often out on the merse, if you can tear your eyes away from tracking the raptors! We've closely followed two hen harriers this week, a young male and a female, and there have also been multiple sightings of sparrowhawk, merlin and kestrel.

Photo credit: Alex Hillier

As well as this week's highlights, you are likely to see the following on the reserve:

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