The unpredictability of nature is a key part of why we get out of bed in the mornings to go out and look at wildlife. Saturday was a classic example.
The windy weather might have inspired many people to go shopping rather than visit a nature reserve. After all, most creatures are harder to spot or hear under such conditions. But, if you make the effort, you have a chance of a good reward. It is a bit like winning the lottery – if you don’t buy a ticket, you’ve no chance of hitting the jackpot.
A couple of volunteers noticed a different bird on one of our lagoons , feeding on insects on the water’s surface in the shelter of some reeds. It was a European storm-petrel, a sea bird that is supposed to be in the Irish Sea or the Western Approaches to the English Channel at this time of year. This amazing little sea bird is only the size of a house martin, nests under rocks on remote islands, and only visits the nest after dark, to avoid being caught by predators.
Why was it in land-locked Cambridgeshire? The gales that have been battering Wales and the south-west of England must have blown this bird overland to us.
About twenty minutes after being discovered, the sun came out, the wind eased, and the bird flew off to the north-east, allowing the winds to take it further away from where it should be. The volunteers' friend and an angler watched the bird too, and a few others managed to get a glimpse only.
For the finders, this was a red-letter day – it was the first time this species has ever been recorded at Fen Drayton Lakes, and the 237th since recording began in the 1950s. They were still smiling on Sunday, but where had the storm-petrel got to?