The past 24 hours has seen Lodmoor transformed into Lapland or rather Lapwing land. Give or take 500 of these beautiful and charismatic waders had taken up residence interspersed with the occasional close relative the golden plover, (nowadays a very scarce winter visitor to the moor) with dunlin, black-tailed godwits, snipe and the dowitcher completing a nice wader assemblage. There were quite large congregations of teal, mallard, shoveller and gadwall concentrated mainly in the patches of ice free water with at least three buzzard and a marsh harrier overhead.
A smallish area of open water in the reeds off Southdown Avenue contained a dense wildfowl gathering (pictured below) consisting mainly of tufty's and pochard but also containing 7 scaup including a single adult male.
The chill has prevented us from completing the pollarding of willows that we had in store for the week as the disturbance of revving chainsaw would put the birds to flight when they are needing to feed and conserve energies to battle the cold, but at least this has enabled us to get some detailed bird counts completed!
Hi Cookie. Pollarding is carried out in part to preserve the trees (it promotes longer life), remove predator perches and for safety reasons - if willows get too top heavy they can suddenly fail as it is a very brittle wood - which is a potential problem in public areas. Trees are pollarded rather than coppiced (cut to ground level) in grazed areas so that the re-growth isn't accessible to cattle. The re-growth is dense and rapid and provides excellent habitat. Some willows I pollarded this time last year had 20 ft of re-growth by August! Most of the timber resulting from the works has been placed in habitat piles to benefit invertebrates and amphibians and the brash into 'dead hedges' to shield sensitive areas from us and in time to provide habitat and perhaps even nesting opportunities for the likes of Cetti's warbler. We prefer to pollard as opposed to coppice as the larvae of lunar clear wing moths burrow into and feed on the trunks. Although in midwinter the results may look quite drastic by mid-summer they will be lush and verdant. Hope that this helps.