Blogs

A long-staying pectoral sandpiper has been showing rather nicely on the main scrape out in front of the reception building for the best part of three weeks now. And is present at almost exactly the same time as last year ... it would be a nice birthday present if it remained until the 22/23 September...

Its not only Team GB that have enjoyed a record haul of gold this past few weeks. Team Dee Estuary have four golds at the moment in the form of golden headed marsh harriers, not something I have experienced before here. As this excellent picture from Andy Davis shows they can easily be seen from...

Another 2 weeks has passed & still no joy in getting onto the RSPB website at Elmley - a real conundrum. I have been sent another possible fix that I will try when I return to Kingshill Farm, but I'm currently at Northward Hill, hence the chance for a further up-date about what's hip &...

At least one juvenile marsh harrier was hunting across the south brooks yesterday morning - this is typical August bird for us here and this one was right on cue. If previous years are anything to go by, it will stay around for some weeks. A young cuckoo was also present yesterday, eating cinnabar caterpillars...

Hello All, Below are some photos from Elmley last week. Two immature Spoonbill dropped in very briefly Common Sandpiper Green Sandpiper Ruff Avocet Chick Hobby with unfortunate victim. Kestrel Greylag Family And finally...

With the weather taking a turn for the worse birding has become slightly moe difficult as birds take refuge (getting decent pictures has been even tougher!). So as soon as the clouds broke I popped down to the hide where this stunning looking male ruff was waiting to have its picture taken. This...

Having been away over the bank holiday at Spurn Bird Obs (am I the only person in the world not to have seen "that" dress?) and only now seeming to get 10 minutes to myself since my return, I thought it was about time that we had a bit of a catch up. The drought continues: there was 0.3mm...

Plenty of stuff around for the good numbers of visitors that visited Elmley over the weekend. Where to start? The 3 spoonbills remained faithful to the Flood most of the time, although they can sometimes be difficult to see when they choose to feed in the deeper channels. Still at least 3 garganey...

Today was the first "field by field" census of the year for this breeding season. We carry out 3 of these to record the breeding populations across the site, walking through every field & aiming to get to within 100m of all points on the reserve. Elmley's quite a big area, so to cover...

Quite an exciting day on the reserve today. I was just going back into the house at Kingshill Farm this morning when I heard the unmistakeable rattling call of a garganey coming from the pool behind the house. There were actually 2 drakes and a duck present here. The call has been likened to someone...