Otter, Mink and Whimbrel

With the recent news of bird flu reaching the UK, we've all been asked to keep an extra special look out for any dead birds on the reserve. Every week we conduct a "patrol" looking for dead birds with the aim of being able to collect the bodies and take swabs. The swabs will be sent off to the lab to be analysed for any diseases, particularly avian botulism. This disease is spread through the consumption of infected maggots, so to minimize the risk we try to bury any dead mammals we find (quite a few so far - rats, rabbits and five moles!).

A few sunny spells in the middle of the week saw a few late insects on the wing - a Red Admiral on Tuesday, and a Common Darter on both Tuesday and Wednesday, with the one on Wednesday having the characteristic weak fluttery flight of a newly emerged teneral.

Common Darter

We have three mink rafts around the reserve which are basically floating platforms with an area of soft clay under a wooden tunnel for recording the footprints of any mammal in the area. We've been checking these every week since I've been working here, but for the first time yesterday I found the footprints of a mink!

Minks are obviously bad news for the local water vole population, so we put the traps out the same day in the hope that we'll catch it, but looking today, the traps were empty.

Today, we were out early doing salinity and depth readings at a number of test sites around the saline lagoon. These readings have been taken for about a year roughly once a fortnight, and we're still collecting data with the aim of leaning more about how the regular flooding from the estuary affects it. Hopefully this data may help to aid any future management strategies for the lagoon to ensure it is working at its full potential.

While we were out there we found numerous otter prints in the soft mud...

While doing a high tide bird count this evening the biggest surprise was a really late Whimbrel. Other counts include 20 Snipe, 119 Dunlin, three Spotted Redshank, 170 Wigeon, 182 Lapwing, 105 Black-tailed Godwit, 16 Greenshank and 39 Redshank.

Whimbrel