I've spent the last couple of days fairly intensively scouring the reserve for broods of lapwing chicks. In the end, we found a total of 22 broods, totalling 42 chicks - not great, but better than last year & considering the way the water is disappearing, I'm quite pleased with the total. We also saw plenty of redshank & avocet chicks, new broods of pochard and shelducklings and a pair of great crested grebes on the fleet at Southfleet hide with 2 cute stripey chicks, hitching rides on the backs of mum & dad. There's also the first few fledged starlings about - won't be long before large flocks are foraging out on the marsh & these are an irresistable target for maruading peregrines, sparrowhawks & hobbys. Look for the tight balls of panicking starlings - a sure sign that somethings having a go.
The single spoonbill was also around, although I think it deserted us today for Oare Marshes. Other highlights included 2 drake & a duck garganey on the pools behind Kingshill Farm (where there were 3 drakes at 6.30 this morning, with one of them on the pool behind the house tonight), a hunting barn owl, a couple of greenshank and a corn bunting, all within 100m of the carpark. The hightide wader roost largely stayed out on the saltmarsh at Wellmarsh, where there were 44 grey plover, 40 bar-tailed godwit, 42 curlew, 20 turnstone & a couple of dunlin. More dunlin & ringed plover, a single bar-tail & hundreds of black-tailed godwits were on the Flood. A single little tern was fishing just off the seawall near Swale hide. So a good day all told, although I did get a thorough soaking turning off the 6" pump onto the Flood - leaky pipes do throw out a fair bit of water on a 6" pump! We've replaced quite a bit of the pipework now, so hopefully it won't happen again.