Catching Up

Sunday, November 5th 2017

The bird ringers are busy with CES, nest box checking and ringing of chicks during late spring and early summer.  Others are always busy rooting, wandering and looking at the same time.  Photographs taken, records made, ring details of chicks and boxes noted.  It then comes a little bit of a shock that all of this data has to be handled.  So it is probably a good job that the winter nights have arrived to allow us all to enter that data into the appropriate lists and programmes. 

I started to enter the monthly observations for May.  This encouraged me to look back at the photos to go with the names I was recording.

Flowers were out in bloom in profusion.  Blossom covered the apple trees.  We think this is a Wild Crab Apple but must go and check next year to see if the petals are pale pink and darker on the back, to confirm our ID.

Marsh Marigold needs no further study.  We just enjoyed the beautiful golden colours showing through some of the still brown winter vegetation.

Wild Strawberry has certainly increased its presence around the reserve, but we did not eat - sorry - see much fruit.

Of course once the flowers are out and the sun is warm so the insects appear.  St Mark's Fly had a tremendous year, with huge numbers of these flies right across the reserve, including at times in the mist nets.

Damselflies appeared.  Large Reds are the first.  Common Darter and Southern Hawker dragonflies are the last and they were in evidence yesterday, a very late date.

Spring is a time of growth and birth.  Our Mallards had several broods of ducklings on the lake.

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