It certainly felt bleak as I met volunteers John Ellis, Julie Straw and Linda Lowndes at 08.00 this morning. It wasn't really surprising as John's in-car thermometer told us that it was -7 degrees C!
We had arranged to meet up, to carry out December's WeBS Count (Wetland Bird Survey). As John had already visited Langford yesterday, to look for the smew that had been on site all week (see Jenny's 'Good Smews!' blog), he knew that most of the site's water bodies were frozen over and where most of the birds were to be found.
John has been carrying out WeBS counts at Langford for a few years now (as, I believe, has Julie) and knows the layout of the site better than I do. Therefore, I left it to John to lead us around the site in the way he thought would cause the least amount of disturbance. His excellent field craft paid off, as we crept, sometimes commando like, around the pools and lagoons.
Shortly after setting off, John spotted two roe deer, creeping around the back of Silt Lagoon1. As we approached Silt Lagoon 4 from the public footpath, a whooper swan drifted into view. The one eventually turned into nine whoopers, a site first for me.
This body of water held quite a large number of wildfowl, including pintail, goldeneye, wigeon, teal, gadwall and pochard.
The previously mentioned smew was the 149th species that John has seen at Langford. Considering how many years it has taken him to reach that number, then surely it was unlikely that he would reach the landmark figure of 150 the following day? However, just as we were about to move on to the next lagoon, John spotted a female mandarin duck, that was flushed from the reeds by a grey heron! Another day, another new species and 150 species achieved! Congratulations John!
Other sightings of note during the morning were 757 teal and bizarrely, a bittern, which we flushed out from the side of the main track, metres away from the (frozen) water.
The illustration below shows a female mandarin duck (courtesy of rspb images)
Congratulations John ! We wont mention the Woodcock !!
If somethings hard to do , its not worth doing - Homer (Simpson)