Hello all from Emily
We’re finally there everyone. On Wednesday 21 January we opened the doors (and swing bridge!) to the Saltholme centre and Wildlife Watch Point, our main hide, in advance of the opening of the rest of the reserve in March. The opening hours are currently 10am – 4pm.
It has been really difficult trying to explain how brilliant Saltholme is on this blog, so it has been fantastic to finally let 
you all in so that you can see for yourselves. Wednesday morning started with a mixture of excitement and pure fear for most members of Saltholme staff. When the first crowds had happily passed through the doors we all relaxed and later, evaluating the day over a few glasses of wine, we all agreed that the day was a great success. We had nearly three hundred visitors and were particularly impressed to discover that we had a visitor all the way from South Africa.
We’ve had some great feedback from you all and I’d just like to say a big thank you from the whole team for all the support and good luck messages that we have received.
In the following few weeks there will be the opportunity to see and explore for yourselves the centre, shop and café. Prior to our opening, the catering team had to test out their equipment so the rest of the staff had the arduous task of having to eat countless bacon sandwiches; we definitely recommend you make time during your visit for one.
High standards of culinary delights aside, there is also the chance to wander down to the fantastic Wildlife Watchpoint. Overlooking one of our busiest pools, you’re likely to see mute swans, shovelers and wigeons, but also keep an eye out for some other less numerous but regular visitors to site such as short-eared owls and peregrines. There will also often be one of our brilliant volunteers or member of the estates team in there to chat with and point out Saltholme’s fantastic wildlife.
If you pay us a visit in these first few months, each time you return there will be something new at the reserve to impress (we’re nice like that). New trails and hides will be opening in conjunction with our official opening in March. Areas such as
the wildflower meadow and the walled wildlife garden, designed by celebrity gardener Chris Beardshaw, will be maturing and for the young, or very adventurous, the playground will be opening later in the year.
So you see, no two visits will be the same and there is plenty to keep you coming back for more.
The icing on the Saltholme cake, which is particularly good news in the current climate, is the financial boost that the attraction is giving the local area. More than 20 jobs have been created at Saltholme (many of these posts filled by local people), much of the food in the café is locally sourced, work contracts have been given to local firms and in total Saltholme is estimated to provide a £1m boost to the local economy. Just another fantastic reason why you should come and visit us!
Just to confirm the parts of Saltholme that are currently open are the centre and the Wildlife Watchpoint; opening hours are 10am – 4pm.
Bird Bits from Toby, or The account of the glaucous-winged gull
I have been wanting to get to grips with gulls and a stint of residential volunteering at RSPB Minsmere helped me in the right direction. When I started as Assistant Warden at RSPB Saltholme I was very pleased to see we were right between a tip and landfill site. My delight was heightened further once I had a nosey round our new Visitor Centre. Not only would I be able to sift through thousands of gulls but I could do it inside, in comfy chairs and with bacon sandwiches flowing from the café behind me.
Unfortunately work beckoned and I was immediately stuck into getting the reserve ready for our grand opening.
The final day of 2008 was part of our work week and during the lunch break I made a quick scan through a group of about 150 gulls on the Main Pool. Slowly I started to examine each one and 10 minutes in I had something…………. grey primaries, ‘Kumlien’s Gull!!’ As I tried to get the others in the room on it, I glanced back at the bird and had a proper look at it after my initial two-second identification and shout. It didn’t actually look like an Iceland type gull at all………. The primary projection seemed to go just past the tail and the head and bill were much more comparable with the Herring Gulls it was keeping company with. Was it just an aberrant Herring Gull?
As well as the obvious grey primaries, the bird had a very finely streaked grey brown head, showing no white, which continued down to the chest. The eye was dark and appeared quite forward on the face. The beak had a pale base with red on the gonys and yellow on the tip. It didn’t look too dissimilar in size and shape to the Herring Gulls, perhaps even a bit slighter. Unfortunately the bird spent most of the time facing away from us which made it tricky to fully analyse these features. Luckily, this did mean that when it stretched it wings we all got a very good look at the primary pattern. There was much less white in the primaries than would be expected in Herring Gull and a thicker white trailing edge to the wing.
I borrowed a colleagues camera and I managed a few record shots of the bird including a crucial photo of it open winged.
Everyone else had headed out onto the reserve to carry on working and I felt very guilty about hanging about birding so knowing I had some good pictures I thought it best to join them. Just as we were packing up Chris Brown, one of our volunteers, remembered he had a copy of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. We had a quick flick through the Gulls and came across Glaucous-winged Gull……….. with a very similar, nay identical, wing pattern illustration to the bird in front of us! Surely not, far too rare we both thought. We weren’t even open yet and didn’t want to get a reputation for dodgy records to start just yet, we need at least a few years to warm up. Back at home I posted my find on BirdForum and Teesmouth Bird Club forum.
Some time later and the consensus was unanimous across the board……… I’d found Britain’s 2nd and the Western Palearctic’s 4th Glaucous-winged Gull!!
Posted by Emily Smith and Toby Collett