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At least one marsh harrier continues to appear on a daily basis - it's plain dark-brown plumage topped with fantastic creamy-yellow/orange head marks it out as a juvenile. I managed to take a distant photo of it whilst it stopped to talk to one of the local herons. Passage waders in the last 2 days...

Decent selection of passage waders now arriving on the brooks - greenshank, spotted redshank (thanks to Graham for photo), little ringed plover, snipe, green sandpiper, common sandpiper and black-tailed godwit present today. There were 2 or 3 garganey amongst the flocks of mallard and teal on the north...

The heath threw up another surprise last week when Ben Rainbow and I found small red damselfly on one of the boogy pools. Just shows what can turn up if you create the right habitat... Elsewhere on site, the marsh harrier was seen again and the wood sandpiper was again present on the north brooks...

A yellow-browed warbler still in the scrub/trees at the top of the zig-zag path today (ie about 100m from the visitor centre) - elusive but a few folk have managed to catch up with it. It was found on Monday by a couple of regular visitors and by the sounds of it, has been roaming between west mead hide...

...wait half an hour. Was something of a changeable day today, but at least we had the first significant rain since late August. This brought about 40 pintail to the north brooks, the largest flock so far this autumn. 2 peregrines also noted ( 1 adult female and 1 juvenile). 2 ruff were amongst the lapwing...

Yesteday - a short-eared owl over south brooks/near Winpenny hide (it seemed to head off to the north), plus juvenile marsh harrier over the north brooks. A small group of crossbills were on the heath, where there are reasonable numbers of siskins and redpolls to be found. 2 ravens were also seen overhead...

2 juvenile marsh harriers spent some of the morning hunting over the north brooks today, putting the wind up ca.200 wigeon and ca.150 teal and occasionally annoying each other. 4 ruff and single golden plover amongst ca.200 lapwings. First fieldfares and redwings of the autumn arriving - small parties...

Myself and two of our volunteers led a guided walk last night, looking for all things crespuscular and nocturnal, and we had a good evening. We couldn't find a barn owl, but remarkably, whilst we were watching a few pipistrelle bats (55s according to the bat detector) charging around in front of...

Good day on the reserve yesterday - apart from the wryneck, which appeared on-and-off throughout the day, the north brooks held an interesting selection of waders: 1 Temminck's stint, 1 little stint, up to 11 ruff, 2 or 3 greenshank, 1 or 2 common sandpipers, up to 12 snipe, plus several ringed plovers...

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...

Hobbies - at least 2, possibly more, were putting on a fantastic show hunting dragonflies over the north brooks yesterday (best seen from Nettley's hide or Jupp's view). A marsh harrier was also seen hunting the brooks. Spotted flycatchers can be found nr Jupp's view and on the edge of the...

3 brent geese were seen heading inland/north (!?) along the river Arun today by one of our visitors. Marsh harrier, buzzard and peregrine noted around the site. The visitor centre will be open this weekend, but please be aware that the access track, car park and trails are likely to be treacherous...