Just as last week, we are flooding at the fen. The current flooding is a perfect storm of high tides, full moon, low pressure, strong northerly winds and a 35 foot swell in the North Sea causing a tidal surge. I have just been and closed the trail from the river end of Sandy Wall all the way past Tower Hide, the Lackford Run up to the railway crossing at Tinkers lane. The woodland loop and Fen Hide remain open, however there are three high tides predicted so it is probable that Fen Hide path will also flood fairly soon. As you can see from the photos (which were taken two hours before high tide on Thursday) there is a large amount of water coming over the paths and into the fen. On a brighter note, the water entering the fen is currently freshwater, this should help dilute the salty water that we took on last week.
The wildlife highlights this week have included 19 marsh harriers in the air at once from Reception Hide on Monday at dusk, Jack snipe and common snipe in front of Reception Hide, bittern from Fen Hide and the kingfishers continuing to perform. Buckenham continues to hold onto its flock of taiga bean geese as well as good numbers of white-fronted and pink footed geese, the wigeon flock is also increasing too. It will be interesting to see if this cold weather pushes more birds to the reserve or has the opposite effect.
So the reserve remains partially open, check on high tide times before visiting in the next few days. Fen Hide and the woodland/sandy wall circuit remain open at present so there are still plenty of places to explore.
On a final note, this spring we will be running a bird identification course. The course will run over three, three hour sessions and will be limited to six places, if you are interested then please keep an eye on the posters at the reserve or the website and book your place. One session will be in late March to look at our resident species and get their identification and songs noted followed by a session in April and May to see and hear all of the migrants at Strumpshaw Fen, I would expect us to learn how to identify at least 87 species over the duration of the three day course.