Category: Sightings

Posted by Ian Re my last blog posting and the pics of the ‘mystery’ duck—it certainly looks like a scaup,they are found on the Solway BUT the RSPB web site says only 1 to 5 pairs breed in the UK in any year making it our rarest breeding duck.Have we been that lucky? Or can […]

Posted by Ian Lovely morning this morning,walked around the corner at the southern end of the long pond and crouched down on the path with nine black ducklings was a ‘dark coloured’ duck. The duck took off instantly and the ducklings scattered over a wide area.Thought the best bet was to leave them to run […]

While we were sat on the seat this morning, the peace was broken by distress cries of Carrion Crows and Magpies, after a few minutes I went to see what all the commotion was about, there were a few chattering Magpies on top of some Willow trees but no sign of the Crows and then […]

At the south end of the long pond Bri was feeding bread to the swans and the three remaining cygnets. They were joined at the feeding by two mallard families, one female duck with nine ducklings and the other with three ducklings. The ducks nearly always give way to the swans. However the squabling between […]

Yesterday we reported the bad news about the cygnets but today we can report good news for a family of Mallard, she has successfully reared nine ducklings, which will be flying any day, really remarkable how she has kept them from all the predators. We have not seen many butterflies this year, but yesterday there […]

A sad day yesterday, overnight it was cold and wet and three of the six cygnets disappeared, predation of just got separated from the parents we will never know. They were growing quite well and all six looked the same size. We have sighted many other young birds and it seems it has been a […]

25th June An excellent day, especially for the insects. The combination of warm sunshine and little wind brought out a good variety of butterflies: small heath and common blue, plus a few small coppers, wall brown, large skipper and large white, the latter around the sea kale. Also saw several cinnabar moths and what I […]

These pics were posted by Jenny one of our regulars on the reserve. She seems to have a great insight into wildlife (or Patience) and supplied the site with more great photographs. There seems to be a problem uploading from ‘sightings’ perhaps our web master can get to the bottom of it. Ian

A very nice morning and it brought out damselfly in there hundreds, lots of Blue-tailed and Common Blue, providing plenty of food for the birds. Found a Sedge Warbler collecting caterpillars for the young, see photo, they were late arriving this year but the young must be close to leaving the nest. Yesterday morning it […]

Posted by Ian The last two weeks of warm sunny weather has allowed the wild flowers in the dunes to put on a spectacular show. In the afternoons when the sun has been up for a while the fragrance of the flowers wafts on the breeze. (the roses in particular are very noticeable). The bloody […]