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Updates from Havergate have been few and far between recently, for that my apologies. In a normal summer week I can expect to be out on the island perhaps four days out of five, in the Autumn two maybe three days a week and in the winter this can drop down to one day a week.
A combination of Snow, Wind, Ice and other important work all play there part in reducing the number of trips out to the island.
Not surprisingly I am always keen to get out on the island; I would like to know what birds are on the island. Smew, Yellow Legged Gulls, Caspian Gulls are all possibilities at this time of the year.
Steve Knell (rspb-images.com)
Is there a Smew on Havergate? There is definately one at Minsmere.
There is also the chance that since the north of the country has been largely frozen for almost a three weeks that our numbers of Wigeon and Teal could be much higher than a normal December period. The lagoons on Havergate island due to there saline nature can take an awful lot to freeze and can often act as a refuge for ducks in these cold conditions with numbers of ducks and waders swelling on the island. Indeed anyone who has been to Boyton Marshes, any other nature reserves or even their local duck pond will have seen that most bodies of water are completely frozen, a situation not replicated on Havergate (at least not the last time I was there).
I am also keen to gather some information about the condition of the birds. After seven days of consecutive freezing weather, the JNCC (Joint nature conservation committee) one of the key bodies in the UK for advising the UK government and the Welsh and Scottish assemblies on nature conservation asks wildfowlers to consider a voluntary suspension of wildfowling activities and after fourteen days of consecutive freezing conditions instigates a compulsory ban on wildfowling. To do this the JNCC compiles reports from several key nature reserves of which Havergate island is one about the condition and behaviour of ducks which is then fed into a national report which is then used to advise the government about temporary wildfowling ban.
In freezing weather wildfowl can suffer what is known as an ecological” bottle neck” they find it hard to obtain food from the frozen ground which reduces their survival time. Lengthy spells of cold weather can also cause birds to change their behaviour, essentially they become much tamer and reluctant to fly when approached. This is because the birds need to conserve their limited energy; therefore it is beholden to us to reduce unnecessary disturbance to allow a maximum number of birds to survive this testing period.
It’s not just wildfowlers that need to show restraint in these conditions. Bird watchers, walkers, dog walkers, Horse riders and other water based sports need to show restraint as well or manage their activities to reduce disturbance or even avoid birds feeding or roosting wildfowl and waders.