RXwildlife Sightings » Barry Yates

Still cold

Barry Yates — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:38:53 +0000

a frozen quarry
The freezing weather continues with extensive covering of snow from Sunday, but there is till some open water and the higher tides are now defrosting much of the old and new saltmarshes. I found a freshly dead Redshank today beside a ditch at Castle Water, no marks on it and still felt warm, but very, very thin with a sharp breast bone (= little flight muscle left). It weighed just 80 grams whereas the BTO range is 115-195g.
Survival of the fittest.
Tomorrow’s forecast looks a bit warmer…

New dunlin habitats

Barry Yates — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:07:05 +0000

Before Sunday’s snow I saw a flock of dunlin feeding on the old shingle ridges around Camber Castle - I’ve not seen that before. And yesterday Laurie Piper took this photo of dunlin feeding on the road at Pett Level. All signs of these shore birds struggling to find enough food in their usual habitats…

Rye Harbour Avocets

Barry Yates — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:08:33 +0000

4 avocets frantically feeding today in the pools of the new saltmarsh near Lime Kiln Cottage.

Swimming Badger

Barry Yates — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:13:52 +0000

At Rye Harbour Nature Reserve the main threat to ground nesting birds is predation from fox and badger, so we try to exclude them with fences. Some of the fences end at ditches and we extend these out into deep water. But it seems this is not keeping out all the badgers! In this video one is swimming around the end of the fence, so we will have to extend it soon.

Elsewhere the new saltmarsh is currently being fortified with extra wire mesh clipped to the bottom of the fence to deter fox and badger digging underneath and we are hoping this will lead to a bumper crop of young redshank and lapwing in the spring.
For photo (more…)

Buglife in ditches

Barry Yates — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:56:48 +0000

There are hundreds of kilometres of ditches in the RX area and they contain many rare and endangered species. So you might be interested in the work of Buglife who have a whole web section devoted to this habitat, including some work done in the RX area. Click here to find out more.

Wildlife Courses in Sussex

Barry Yates — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:07:19 +0000

The Sussex Wildlife Trust runs a wide range of wildlife courses throughout the year that can be viewed by clicking here.

Winter Waderland

Barry Yates — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:16:30 +0000

The Sussex Wildlife Trust has a regular blog with contributions from its staff and I have just written my first about Rye Harbour wildlife - click here.
On that page you can sign up to receive e-mail notification of their new blogs.

RX website visitors

Barry Yates — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:55:41 +0000

Visitor figures for this website in 2011 were:
172,107 visits
58,624 unique visitors
67% of visits were by return visitors

More December Blooms

Barry Yates — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:12:25 +0000

Bur Parsley (or Bur Chervil - above) was flowering this morning in a sheltered spot on Rye Harbour Farm - the Collins Flower Guide flowering period is May-Jun! In my garden there was also Lesser Periwinkle flowering (the guide says Mar-May).

Winchelsea Beach Waders

Barry Yates — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:49:14 +0000

At high tide this pm 200 plus Knot, 39 Sanderling, plus 15 Grey Plover and 11 Dunlin all in 1 flock on the beach about 400 mtrs east from Dogs Hill Road. Andrew Killick by e-mail