A huge number of interesting birds have to get from a long way south of here to their breeding areas a fair distance north of here, most will pass by undetected, either a mile or more up in the air or travelling over sea rather than land, but there is always the hope that a bit of weather might cause an unusual bird to stop off.

The nearest we got this April to a rare passage migrant was a green sandpiper, which spent much of the day on the 16^th sitting on the wooden posts which border the lagoons. This species used to be a regular overwintering bird in the area, but now we are lucky to get one a year.

The only unusual gull was an adult yellow-legged gull on the 1^st, more than likely the same bird which has been visiting for years. A buzzard on the 3^rd was the best raptor of the month. Shelduck (above) were seen quite frequently early in the month, either a single bird or a pair, and we had two male red-crested pochard on the 21^st.

Little egrets (above fishing with a grey heron) were a big feature of the month, after being almost absent for the first three months of the year, they soon spotted when the water level dropped at the start of April and began visiting on a daily basis. A flock of five were seen together near the water outlet on the 14^th.

In terms of our predictable spring arrivals, willow warblers which were first seen at the end of March continued to pass through all month. Both reed warbler and sedge warbler were first seen on the 9^th, with numbers of both building up in the run-up to the breeding season. The first swallow of the year was seen on the 11^th, and the first common sandpiper on the 13^th. A first common tern (above) passed through on the 26^th, though it wasn’t long before a pair started to visit and show interest in our tern rafts. The first returning swifts (below) were on the 29^th, a little later than average.

This year we had to wait longer than usual for the first breeding of the year, but a pair of Egyptian geese which nested in the lagoons had a brood of goslings at the start of the month, with the first brood of mallard ducklings appearing around the same time. Both the New River pair and the reservoir pair of mute swans spent the month incubating eggs, and our resident great crested grebes spent the month attempting to breed but struggling with the rising and falling water levels.

The total number of bird species seen here in April 2023 was 67, beating April last year by two but still a few below the historical average for the month.