It’s a nice time of year at Marshside. The winter visitors are arriving, migrant birds are on passage and dragonflies are at their most visible.

Star birds at the moment are a couple of Ruddy Shelduck (totally wild, of course), up to a dozen Cattle Egrets and almost as many Curlew Sandpipers, with Pink-footed Goose numbers building rapidly. But there are still insects around too - I didn’t get a photo of the Short-winged Conehead, but with Migrant Hawkers posing on every available twig, it would have been rude not to snap a few of them.