Please bring wellies!

Well some of us are back at work now.  Not all.  There’s evidence that lots of people are still out enjoying Greylake and Swell Wood before the Christmas holiday is properly over.  And the new decade begins in earnest.  So let's begin with a December sunset I took at West Sedgemoor.

On our last day of work before Christmas, we had to venture out in the floods on a critical mission to Greylake.  The pond dipping platform had become stuck on its chains, unable to float up with the rising water.  It required the site manager, a crow bar and not one but two residential volunteers; the last two in case the site manager should fall in.  We deliberately didn’t question the need for three of us to attend because the afternoon sun was so stunning and we’d had quite enough of sharpening loppers.  And lucky we all were, because Greylake on a December afternoon when the sun is quite like that and the lapwing and golden plover quite so in the mood to perform is something else.  It’s now January of course but don’t be put off a visit, thinking this a phenomenon of the past.  Especially if there looks to be a good sunset.  With the land so flooded, the waters lend a photographic light to everything.  I took a photo of a friend standing in the water and when I looked at it later, it honestly looked to me like I must have used professional lighting and had lackeys holding big circular reflectors either side of us.  If anyone fancies themselves as a portraitist, save the studio fee and visit the Somerset levels.

We met a couple of visitors who were asking if this was the place for the starling murmuration.  They had come from London and wanted to be treated.  They were really looking for RSPB Ham Wall near Glastonbury, in the Avalon Marshes.  They couldn’t have chosen a better evening for it but all the same, as we turned back to watch the golden plover and lapwing flocks a thought occurred to us.  Who needs the starling murmuration when you’ve got this?  Golden plover and the green plover (lapwing, also the onomatopoeic ‘peewit,’ which in these large winter groups I think sound very much like little electronic toys being pressed and thrown around by thousands of restless toddlers) are larger than starlings but at Greylake and West Sedgemoor, where they are seen together in large flocks, they are quite easy to tell apart once they’re in the air.  Lapwing, being bigger and blacker, with their characteristic paddle wings show their blunt ends as they turn en masse.  Golden plover, often going higher into the air, form just as big a group but they are smaller and paler and, when the light is right, you see that they positively glisten as they swarm and twist.  Turning away from the sun, they flash all at once white underneath, iridescent like a shoal of fish.

On our first day back to work since the new year, we had another critical mission to Greylake.  We needed to apprise ourselves of the new wet situation over there.  One of our number, our most intrepid residential volunteer, had been out in the previous week to put out signs to alert visitors of the need for wellies.  The paths to the hide are currently underwater at Greylake, about ankle depth although this is less than it was.  The water level does seem to be falling slowly but we will have to keep an eye on it.

Since it was also our first day back, it was most important that we have a good sit in the hide and really take the time to get to know what can currently be seen out there.  I’m pleased to say we threw ourselves into this job with a verve you wouldn’t expect after a period of laziness, I mean Christmas.  It was very nice to chat to a couple of our hide regulars, and they always give us good intel, whether it’s recent bird activity or local history.  There were two snipe sitting in plain sight in front of the hide, with no need to use binoculars, clearly indisposed to move.  Another sat in the buff coloured patch of typha, a foot above the water.  This one particularly demonstrated snipe’s extraordinary camouflage, its head and body striping looking like just another bit of dead reed.  As usual, there was marsh harrier, lapwing, shoveler, mallard, teal, wigeon.  You can often hear the scratchy call of snipe flying overhead.  And still the irritated call of Cetti’s warbler will try to heckle you as you walk to the hides.  A single black tailed godwit was sitting on a bit of raised ground, right in the middle of the drove, as we looked out towards the west of the reserve.  Flood water rushing from left to right across the drove like newfound river ways, the godwit steady and undeterred in the middle.  As the floods have spread, over the Christmas period, it seems that the golden plover have dispersed slightly and they weren’t immediately viewable at Greylake on Thursday morning.  We did see them standing in water covered fields, either side of us as we approached Greylake, hiding among the lapwing and conserving their energy before the flight show later.  When they start to gather in the sky at about 3pm, you’ll also see flocks of starlings racing through, keen not to be late for their own show at Ham Wall.

There is one thing that you can take away from this blog post.  Wellies.  If you’re planning to visit Greylake, which is a commendable idea, please only do so if you’re happy and able to wear wellies or otherwise make your way through the water.  For now…  Because otherwise, the path to the hide is kept with access to all in mind.  The Greylake site itself is a big plot of land that’s lower than the land surrounding it.  It was drained to grow arable crops (carrots) before the RSPB took it over and, in drying out, the peat oxidized and has shrunk.  This is the case with peat wherever it is drained in this way.  As such, it is naturally prone to holding flood water.  But the floods in the area now are the most significant since the Levels flooded badly in 2013/14.  We have occasionally had to close the reserve when the paths become unsafe.  However, it is hoped that this won’t be necessary.

Fiona