FLOODED FIELD FIESTA

Chilly start to Thursday 15th soon gave way to another bright sunny day. It doesn't seem right to refer to the birds as wintering here, when the weather is so warm.

The grazing fields are still saturated after recent rains and all the waders and wildfowl are loving the flooded creeks and flashes of water. With so many pools across the fields, there seemed to be bird activity everywhere. Lots of different sounds and calls came from each of the feeding flocks bringing the fields really to life.

The wigeon were scattered across the fields inviting themselves to be counted and after five minutes my little hand-held clicker stopped at 750 which is a record flock size for these fields. Up to 200 teal dabbled, upended and even displayed to each other in many of the wet flashes. The most obvious and loudest of the flocks were the 600 brent geese. Tucked in the western corner were a group of 15 gadwall happily dabbling in the shallow pools and regularly calling with their distinctive mechanical-like quacks.

Around many pools were lots of pairs of bright orange legs that caught the eye, these belonging to about 50 redshank, making the most of the rich pickings while the tide was in. There were about 200 black-tailed godwits mixed in with 70 curlew, whilst 100 dunlin could also be seen joining in the flooded field fiesta.
A group of 500 golden plover huddled together in the middle of one field taking the chance to have a break from feeding.

The bright white outline of a little egret gracefully stalked one of the pools. It was even entertaining watching a group of about 150 jumpy starlings trying their best to have a good feed in the grass. They don't seem to do prolonged settled feeds, as every few seconds they are up in the air again before dropping down nearby to resume their noisy chattering and feeding.

Nearly 25 species of bird totalling about 2500 birds is an excellent display and these few days will probably end up being the peak of bird activity for these fields this winter. In another month many of the waders and wildfowl will start returning to their breeding grounds, so we have to enjoy their time with us as much as we can.