Tuesday 20 April 2010

Turning cuckoo...

No sign of the Nafferton cranes on Sunday night, but another two blue-headed type wagtails were reported from Watton NR – they did not purport to be the sykes type on this occasion. At least another two standard ‘flavilla’ were present on the walls of D reservoir today which I managed to capture below. Also on the D res alone were a conservative count of 700 sand martin, 200 swallow and a handful of house martins at 5pm. A check of around 56 nestboxes today revealed 9 with breeding activity so far, and a very territorial moorhen was seeing off 3 mallard from its nest on North Marsh. Also on the marsh were a grey heron – successfully fishing in the video below, common buzzard and at least 4 pochard - which appear to be getting set for a bumper year across site. A young jet black rabbit by the D res. substation was an unusual reserve sighting, although numbers exist on the approach road (presumably they are a hangover from someone’s escaped pet in the past). Bird of the day was the first cuckoo of the year reported on North Scrub.