A very nice surprise was awaiting me yesterday afternoon as I made my way around Phase 2 to top up the bird feeders at the south end of the reserve!
It had been a fairly quiet afternoon bird-wise, with teal, mallard and tufted duck on the silt lagoons, a group of black-headed gulls, joined by a couple of common gulls loafing on the ice on silt lagoon 5 and a water rail squealing away from the frozen reedbed on Phase 1. As I approached the high level water carrier, a group of wildfowl came into view half way down the channel towards Phase 3. From a distance two of the birds looked a little different and quickly got my interest, so up went the binoculars and much to my amazement, there were two beautiful female smew.
Smew are small ducks of the sawbill family, related to goosanders and red-breasted mergansers. The name sawbill comes from their serrated mandibles, enabling them to catch fish. They are a winter visitor to our shores, breeding in boreal forests near lakes or rivers in Scandinavia and Russia. Whilst the males are stunningly beautiful, with their black and white plumage, our birds, both females are pretty fantastic looking in their own right. Known as 'redheads', they have a lovely chestnut coloured crown and forehead, bright white cheeks and steely-grey wings and back. In flight they have a distinctive white wing patch and white underside.
And why are they so special? With only a few hundred birds wintering in the UK each year and declining numbers in recent years, they are not a common species at all. Records in Nottinghamshire are scarce and this is only the second record for Langford ever!
And thanks to the efforts of volunteer Graham Gamage, the birds have been relocated today in the same place as yesterday. Good smews indeed!