The regular 1st Sunday of the month volunteers turned out and constructed a hand rail on the entrance to the Ivy North hide and also some tidying up of the garden. This is just the kind of job that is impossible to do on my own, or even with one helper, so thanks to them for the help.

There were also a few more birds around with two Whimbrel on Ibsley Water for a good part of the day and a report of 7 more flying over. There were also two each of Black-tailed Godwit and Common Sandpiper. Hobbies were more in evidence with three or four circling high overhead. At one point two locked talons and tumbled towards the ground for several hundred feet, they were lost to view behind some trees. Also over were Peregrine and a single drake Goosander. There was also a "new" drake Shoveler on Ivy Lake.

Also on Ivy Lake at least twelve Common Terns on the rafts, but also a pair of Lesser Black-backed Gulls. The male of this pair arrived with a bulging neck and the female started to food beg, eventually he produced a waterbird chick of some sort, probably a Moorhen. However he did not seem to have got the idea of courtship feeding and promptly tried ot swallow it again. A tug of war ensued with which he eventually won. Hopefully she will decide he is a dead loss and they will give up and go elsewhere since if they do nest it will probably be the end of the terns.