Walk round on the weekend of the 21st August

What was a nice weekend, with quite a good amount of sunshine, but perhaps a little bit to much wind especially on the Sunday. Not many bees & butterflies about, but good numbers of dragonflies

SDown at the South hide were several cormorants, mainly on the tern island. There were good numbers of diving duck, with a good variety of passage waders (Ruff, Greenshank, Common sandpiper & Oystercatcher). Only a few Sand martins about & it looks like we have seen the last of our Swifts. The highlight here has been the Kingfisher & Little grebe that have been showing well in front of the hide. Indeed I had a good session with the Kingfisher when he or she decided to use the perches in front of the hide to fish & preen from

Black-tailed skimmer

Walking around, the usual pair of Little owls could be seen in their tree (fortunately they perch on the dead branches). The best point of this part was the Dragonflies. I got my first sighting of Emerald damselfly, a Southern hawker was seen & a few Migrant hawkers have taken up residence in the hawthorn hedge. Again if you look carefully you can see Common & Ruddy darters in the verge vegetation. What was memorable was being buzzed & investigated by one of 4 or so Brown hawkers & glimpsing Emperor dragonflies above. Coming away from the Far Lake, a small butterfly was seen that was identified by my companion as a Brown argus a rare visitor (looked like a Blue to me)

Reedbed wise, the lower water levels are attracting waders as shown by Ruff, Ringed plover & Dunlin all showing well by the chair. It was also showing that we have had our usual late August influx of Teal & Snipe. I would like to add Shoveller & Gadwall to this list, but think this is more to do with birds becoming more active after the eclipse moult rather than numbers increasing. Black-tailed skimmer & Wall were by the Dragonfly ponds as were our family of Mute swans, who at the present moment walk everywhere. There are now just a few washed out Painted ladies left.

The turret hide had the usual Green sandpiper on view & the first of our autumn Canada geese