I was a young boy watching Stingray on the television, getting very excited when Commander Shore would announce “anything can happen in the next half hour”. And it feels like that now at Saltholme. Yesterday, 2 Spoonbills dropped in to join the throng of avocets and ruff on the wet grassland, while 2 marsh harriers put the jitters into our remaining wigeon. This morning, we have our first grasshopper warbler reeling away on the main drive, a willow warbler by the fire station screen, little ringed plovers here and there and a lesser whitethroat at Haverton. Swallows are appearing erratically amongst the sand martins which appear to be everywhere, and water voles are being seen from Paddy’s bridge, and the main lake by the sheep shed.
For me however, the stars of the show are Garganey, our special duck, one of which arrived on Friday. Unusually for a duck, they go somewhere else for the winter, and arrive here to breed in spring. The white eye stripe and mottled plumage of the male is very striking.
A distant shot of our first male garganey of the year by Dan McKie
Only 100 pairs of Garganey breed in Britain, so the 5 ish pairs we have here are really very special. The ish is because these are incredibly secretive birds and notoriously difficult to monitor. I’ve never found a nest. I hope it won’t be one of my SMART objectives for the year !