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I thought that we'd got rid of it, but once again certain bits of the reserve are experiencing a "bloom" of blue-green algae. It's not actually an alga at all, as it's "proper" name is cyanobacteria. These are photosynthesising bacteria, that can affect water quality when...

A day off on Saturday, so an opportunity to get off Sheppey & I decided to head off & try to see some new species of odonata. Or dragonflies & damselflies to you & I. Heading south from Elmley, the lifting bridge was up over the Swale, so rather than sit in a queue of stationary traffic...

First of all, apologies for the lack of blog up-dates in the past week or so - for some reason I've been unable to access the RSPB website from here and so haven't been able to add anything. Not that there hasn't been anything happening! As people may have seen from the Forum comments...

A wide variation of birds to see at Blacktoft right now. From our spoonbills to some young avocets to those spotted redshanks. Lets start with those spoonbills . They are sleeping a lot this week - often at the back of townend. These two have been here for three weeks now. Today they left their sleeping...

I'd been concerned for 3 months about the lack of rain, but of course I was forgetting that June is the month for Wimbledon & cricket test matches, so maybe shouldn't have been quite so worried. The last couple of days has seen another half an inch of rain drop on Elmley and todays strong...

This predictions business isn't easy you know. A couple of posts ago, I suggested that a couple of nice June surprises for the reserve might involve a roller or a squacco heron. Imagine my frustration when first a roller appeared on Monday. In Suffolk. And then today came the news that there was...

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...

Can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since my last blog - time just seems to zip past these days! Going around the reserve today checking the livestock, there were numerous familiar faces: there's still one spoonbill hanging around the pools east of the Flood, although the strong wind today...

There's probably one question above all others (well maybe apart from "I've found a baby bird. What do I do etc?") that visitors & callers to the reserve ask at this time of year. And that's "Are there any baby avocets we can see from the hides?" Well, I can exclusively...