It’s been a lovely few days on the reserve – despite the chilly weather, there’s been plenty of fresh winter sunshine and lots of fantastic sightings! On Sunday I was lucky enough to be able to tag along on the Wetland Bird Survey, which is a monthly count of wetland birds including waders and waterfowl run by the British Trust for Ornithology. The survey aims to monitor population sizes of non-breeding birds to identify trends in their numbers and distribution, and to identify important sites for waterbirds.
The patch we surveyed covered part of the flashes. I was responsible for counting the more easily identifiable birds like mute swans, cormorants and coots, whereas Richard, my experienced tutor for the morning, recorded numbers of gulls, ducks, and everything in between. I was excited to see my first pair of pintails from Lin Dike hide – although I’ve seen pictures, and we’ve been getting lots of visitor sightings of these birds in the past few weeks, I still hadn’t managed to spot one until Sunday. The males especially are really beautiful birds, with bold white stripes down the sides of their chestnut brown heads, and a delicate tapering tail. We also got a glimpse of a sparrowhawk over Spoonbill flash, soaring overhead in search of prey.
Male pintail image by Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)
Also of note were the groups of shoveler ducks, goldeneyes and shelducks. Shovelers are very distinctive birds, with huge spatula-like beaks for which they’re named. You can always tell a shoveler, even from far away, because they sit low in the water, heads weighed down by their giant bills! Seen closer up, they are actually very beautiful – males have dark glossy green heads and white bodies with chestnut brown flanks – just lovely! I sometimes mistake shelducks for shovelers from a distance as they have very similar colours – a lovely chestnut brown band intersecting a white breast, and a dark head. Shelducks are comparatively larger than mallards, but smaller than geese – you can find them mainly in coastal areas.
Shoveler image by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Shelduck image by Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com)
One thing we didn’t manage to see was a smew, although a visitor in Lin Dike Hide reported a female earlier that morning. I’ve personally never seen a smew either, although they are apparently one of our most attractive and distinctive diving ducks. If the sighting was accurate, then this will be the first smew seen for this winter – they come over in small numbers from Scandinavia and Russia, and also sometimes move over from Holland and Denmark to escape the freezing weather. The male is a striking bright, snowy white, with bold black eye patches and head crest. The females are slightly less flashy, although no less lovely, with ruddy red heads, white throat patches and smoky grey backs. Apparently it’s best to keep an eye out for them on main bay, where there’s lots of shelter around the edges - I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled!
Smew artwork by Mike Langman (rspb-images.com)