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A friend of mine came over to the island today to do a bit of winter birding. The recent cold snap has frozen the reserve, with the result that most of the bird interest stays outside the seawall on the Swale. As a result, we decided to head elsewhere today. First stop was the beach at Minster, on the...

Compared to some of the glorious winter weather we've experienced recently, today wasn't too inspirational, but the team took the opportunity to get out "in the field" anyway. A quick check first of the Elmley livestock: all the cattle have now gone until the spring, with only the sheep...

Hello All, A few photos from late December & early January. Over 3,000 Brent Geese on the Island at the moment and normally some are present at Elmley. Many Common Buzzards about. Great Views around the reserve Fieldfare A collection of Waders. Photo below...

The weather over the past few days has, by & large, been fantastic! Gloriously sunny days, light (or even no) winds, crisp & clear. On Saturday afternoon, the visibility was so good that, looking through my 'scope from Kingshill Farm, I could pretty much count how many people (12 - 15 I thought...

With no sign of "our" rough-legged buzzard since the Bank Holiday Monday and with the gale force winds of the ensuing few days, the news of a bird on Saturday at Northward Hill reserve made me think that it was likely to be the Elmley bird relocating a bit further west. Venturing over there...

Well, here we are in 2012 and returning to Elmley after my Christmas break, I very much had a sense of deja vu, although on this occasion it wasn't just the RSPB website that I couldn't access - I couldn't connect to the internet at all! We traced the glitch to a faulty dongle and having...

Anticipation is mounting for the impending arrival of a benevolent elf from Lapland. But as far as I'm concerned, he's been beaten to the UK by a number of his fellow compatriots! RSPB are now managing a number of fields on the Harty Marshes at the east end of the Isle of Sheppey. We have acquired...

Fingers crossed, the Elmley/RSPB website saga could soon be rectified. It seems that the mobile phone connection we use for our computer system at Kingshill Farm has been routing requests to access the website to a different address & so the operation "times out" before the mistake is realised...

Time for another of my rather infrequent updates, as I STILL can't access the RSPB website from Elmley. We're still trying to fix the problem, but it's a slow process. Highlight of the month so far was the discovery of a grey phalarope on the Flood reservoir on Saturday night. It was still...

The rain finally arrived at Elmley on Thursday afternoon - only showers, but some of them heavy enough to make a difference. We got just over 10mm, which wasn't enough to wet up areas that have dried out, but will keep the remaining wet bits wet a bit longer. Crucial for the many wader chicks that...

Hello All, As Gordon posted in his earlier blog the weather was pretty grim, however Gordon's constituent's on the reserve still made the visit worth while. The Great Black-backed Gull was in bullish mood roaming up and down the reserve behaving like a Marsh Harrier, the Marsh Harriers...

photo taken 20/10/10 Got into spitend hide about 1.30pm and thought i'd be in for a long wait. within about 5 minutes a merlin flew in front of the hide about 8 meters away and stayed perched for about 3-4 mins :-))))))