This last week I have seen a bit of wildlife that, although I’ve seen before, are not ones I see regularly. Some are more welcome than others.

One of these I hope I will not see again , I am hoping it was just passing through, this is an American Mink. It was spotted swimming on Woggle water pond and then later moved down to Dunces Corner Pond. My hope is that it has moved on as the sighting was on Saturday and I have not seen it since.

A more welcome sighting was a Water Shrew that appeared at the hide a Dunces Corner. It popped out the dry stone wall to have a feed on some bird seed I’d put out for our family of voles.

I also had a visit from a Willow Tit at the feeding station, I had not seen one for over a year. So lets hope they are coming back to the reserve. We also caught and ringed a Willow Tit up at Dunces Corner on Wednesday. It may be the same one but more likely there is more than one in the area (fingers crossed).

The last week has seen some warm days which has brought out our dragonflies.

We currently have 3 types flying at the moment :- Southern Hawker, Migrant Hawker and Common Darter

Here’s a few pictures:-

Its that time of year again when the hazels and acorns are available in large numbers. Our grey little friends are making the most of the opportunity. They are decimating the hazel especially. Only greys seen so far no sign of any reds yet, unfortunately.

I managed to capture a few photos of a male Southern Hawker Dragonfly paying very close attention to Charlie our male swan:-

One of the cygnets was also showing an interest in the strange creature in the sky:-

The rut has begun, our little Doe has been attracting the attention of the local amorous males:-

Well based on the evidence above I am hopeful that we will have some new youngsters next year!

It was a very good day for butterflies on the reserve today with 10 different species spotted. Also and array of other insects. Here is my little picture parade of those I spotted.

During our recent bird ringing session we captured a lovely pair of juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers, very likely from the same family group. They certainly made a lot of noise when caught in the same net.

The juveniles will eventually lose the red cap and the mature female will have no red on the head and the mature male will have a red patch on the back of its head.

I had a good time this morning hosting a group from mid-Northumberland U3A, the only disappointment was not a lot of wildlife was on view (drab weather didn’t help). Ironically probably less than 15 minutes after the group left this little fella made an appearance:-

A beautiful little bird.

I was out for a wander with my camera and here are a collection of pictures from my wanderings:-

We have had a busy week monitoring what is on the reserve this month.

We had the Natural history Society of Northumbria in doing a botany survey, thanks to Brenda Astley for organising this. Below is a link to the list of plants identified.

Then we had a moth survey led by Brian Harle.

Below are a few pics of some of the moths that were captured.

So we are now up to 199 species of moths identified on the reserve.

Then finally we had a bird ringing session led by David Noble-Rollin.