Is it Spring?

After the exhaltations over last week's spring weather and migrants, a visit to the reserve this morning was pretty depressing. After the rain of the last 24 hours some ditches had risen by two foot again and some of the grazing marsh had gone back to being either waterlogged or part flooded. It was cold, wet and muddy, and almost certainly a few Lapwing eggs will be sitting in icy water and will be lost this time round.
To complete the wintery picture the flock of around 280 White-fronted Geese were spread out across part of the marsh, happily grazing the grass and wondering what all the fuss was about.

In my garden, a robin sitting on eggs in a nest box by my conservatory was huddled down tight against the rain this morning. The box faces south and unfortunately she was copping the rain full on for a while. A pair of blackbirds appear to have just hatched out their first brood in next door's garden as well, the female was on my lawn earlier on, collecting small worms and taking them back to the nest site.

With strong and cold winds and more rain forecast into the weekend it looks like we're going to start a fourth month of this continuously unsettled weather.