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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...

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...

With light winds & sunny skies, I was quite hopeful that today would produce our first yellow wagtail or garganey of the year. Alas, I was disappointed, but the variety of raptors around today made up for it. Both male & ring-tail hen harrier were seen, along with a merlin, at least 3 buzzards...

It's not every day that I add a new species to my Elmley list (I think you'd have to go back to the May 25th "double-whammy" of black-winged pratincole and hoopoe in 2009. Now that was a day...!); and even less often that I get to use the ever-so-slightly disparaging term for a red...

For anyone out there with a penchant for flocks of honkers, Elmley is the place to be at the moment. I am of course referring to geese - not necessarily all wild, but there are a lot here at the moment, both in numbers and varieties. I counted 7 types this afternoon, and possibly missed at least one...

Yesterday was awful. Wet, windy, yuk. I'd mentally prepared myself for a day in the office catching up with some paperwork, cd player on in the background, kettle on. Nice. And then the phone rang & it was our cattle grazier who wanted to come up to take the calves off for weaning. Did he know...

Dare I say it was almost a bit "samey" on the reserve today? Two little stint, a spotted redshank, a few black-tailed godwit and a green sandpiper on the Flood? Check. Raptors- Peregrine, buzzard, merlin, marsh harrier? Check. Nah! Let's face it - that's a pretty decent days...

The rather indifferent tides at the moment are failing to push waders off of the Swale and onto the reserve. Nevertheless, there were still 3 little stints on the Flood this morning, along with green sandpiper, black-tailed godwit, avocet, snipe & lapwing. A bit of a show from the birds of prey...

Lapland buntings used to be a regular feature of Elmley in winter, with more or less annual records during the first 25 years from 1975-2000. But the frequency of records has declined recently, perhaps as a result of fewer birders being familiar with their distinctive "ticky-tick teew" flight...