Some Things are Hard to Swallow

A rough day on the reserve today, but despite this there were reports of at least eight sand martin over Ibsley Water, so Spring migrants are still arriving. I missed seeing the martins but did see a little ringed plover. Other birds today were a small flock of black-tailed godwit which flew over, a single dunlin, the black-necked grebe, now in breeding plumage and a brambling. The bittern continues to be seen at Ivy North Hide, it is getting very late for it to still be here. At the end of the day it was sitting hunkered down in the reeds near the hide, looking miserable after a wet and windy day.

Miserable looking bittern

It did not look as though it was interested in anything other than keeping out of the wind and rain, however something caught its attention.

What was that?

It certainly seemed worth investigating.

Got to go and take a look

It certainly was!

Definitely worth taking a look

Having made the capture the next trick is was to manoeuvre it into a swallowable position.

sideways is no good

Turning a pike this big whilst it is still alive is no easy task.

Too good a meal to let go

Even when turned it was to wide to get down with mouth agape.

Eventually the head was in

Now it was only going to go one way.

Almost gone

It is a good thing they have expanding necks!

Gone

It then stalked off, passing close to the hide to spend the night digesting, I would guess it won’t be flying off tonight so should still be around for at least another day.

Heading off to do a little digesting

A cracking way to end the day!

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Time for a Trim

Tuesday is one of our volunteer task days at Blashford and today’s task was to cut the vegetation in front of Ivy North hide and open up some sight lines through the reedbed. The hides are great for seeing birds but only if we can keep the views open, but more than this we are also trying to ensure that people get the best possible views of the wildlife that might be on offer. One of the occasional treats at Ivy North is the chance to see a bittern and this is one of the main objectives of the reed cutting near this hide.

Reeds at Ivy North hide before cutting sight lines.

The reeds have been spreading and this year’s growth was especially vigorous, meaning than cutting the line was hard work. The one positive was that it was fairly dry, although this made cutting easier to do it means that there is not likely to be a bittern there any time soon.

Ivy North reeds after cutting sight line

This year I also cut a line through to the water right in front of the hide.

a line cut through to the water

The objective of a hide should be to give the observer a view that they would not get otherwise. At Blashford we have tried, as much as possible, to get each hide to deliver something different and hopefully at least one or two will have something really worth seeing from them at all times of the year. Today there were two peregrine near Tern hide, with one adult perched on one of the posts near the hide, the water pipit was seen from both Tern and Goosander hide and a great white egret from Ivy North, despite our  working outside the hide. The only other birds there whilst we were working were two or more water rail heard calling and a singing Cetti’s warbler.

We are soon looking to replace the Tern hide, it is in a very exposed location and is showing signs of age ahead of most of the others. Replacement offers the chance to tweak things a bit too and the new hide is to be slightly larges, slightly higher off the ground and moved ever so slightly, all changes that should give improved views. Expect to read more about this and other updates top the reserve in the coming weeks.

Dirty Work

Working in a nature reserve sounds great and, to be fair, often is, but it can have a less appealing side too. On Monday night someone had a concerted effort to break into our tool store, they used a disc-cutter to try and cut their way in, both from the side and by cutting off the door hinges. Their efforts failed, the store is connected to an alarm system and they left the scene empty-handed. The only bright sparks present were the ones that set fire to the contents of the store. Luckily the fire burned itself out before it did too much damage, but the burning polypropylene rope and other material managed to coat everything with thick black soot. So after we had got the hinges welded up there remained the filthy job of taking everything out of the store and cleaning it and then washing down the whole of the inside. It took all day and this was with the help of the famous Blashford volunteers in the morning and Emily all afternoon, all in all, I would say it would have taken me at least four days work on my own, except that it had to be done in one go so it would have actually been impossible to do alone. Our tools remain useable, although all with a rather dark patina, what I think is termed “smoke damaged”.

Of course doing this meant that we did not all get out to do work that would actually benefit the reserve, or at least not as much as we would have done. Luckily the volunteer team on Thursday is large enough that we were still able to deploy some people to cut the vegetation in front of Ivy North hide to improve the view and cut part of the sweep meadow.

Incidents like this are very frustrating, diverting resources to doing things that don’t benefit wildlife or visitors and take valuable time away from positive activity. Recent visitors will probably also have seen the caravan dumped in the entrance, something else that will cost money to get removed, hopefully it will go in the next few days.

Meanwhile, out on the reserve there was some wildlife. The great white egret was on Ivy lake for much of the day and the male stonechat was still on the shore of Ibsley Water, just west of the Tern hide. When I was locking up the Tern hide at the end of the afternoon the gull roost already contained about 1500 black-headed gull, about the same number of lesser black-backed gull, about 275 herring gull and at least 7 adult yellow-legged gull.

A Snap

As Jim earlier posted, there was a bittern visible from the Ivy North hide today, I saw it and here is a picture to prove it!

Lurking bittern