I’m beginning to think that spring has arrived, at last. A few early morning surveys in the past week at Fen Drayton Lakes have influenced my thinking.
The first mornings were frosty and still, with mist sitting on the calm waters until the rising sun burned the mist away. Beautiful to look at, and rewarding for getting out of bed so early.
The latest survey morning, Saturday, was calm and much warmer. The effect on the birds was almost deafening, as they all seemed to be singing at once – a brilliant dawn chorus. It was one of those mornings when you just want to sit and listen. Sadly, I didn’t have that luxury – there was more work to do, but that wasn’t so bad.
There were more signs of spring as the day went on – parties of recently-fledged long-tailed tits were noisily working their way along hedges, searching for caterpillars among the hawthorn blossom. Then there was the great crested grebe carrying 3 tiny chicks on its back, their stripy heads occasionally poking out from under the parent’s wing. They don’t come much cuter.
By the end of the afternoon, the collective effort of a handful of visitors produced a list of 92 bird species recorded at Fen Drayton Lakes on that one day. That was a one-day record for the site, yet remarkably, no one could find a couple of resident bird species, and there was a distinct lack of migratory wading birds. There were reports of the latter group from around the region, so why not here? Was there a conspiracy amongst them to keep our tally below the magical 100?
The hawthorn blossom was a weekend feature too – the heady perfume filled the sheltered lanes. There are patches of flowering cowslips in dry areas, and ox-eye daisies will be flowering very soon.
The first damselflies are now emerging from the aquatic stages of their lifecycle, risking life as they fly where hobbies fly. Hobbies are migratory falcons, recently arrived from their winter trip to Africa, and they depend on large flying insects to restore their energy levels before they begin to nest – alder flies, damsel and dragonflies, and chafer beetles will all be devoured.