Early signs of Spring at Wheldrake Ings

Gazing out of my window upon cold and cloudy skies and a very wet garden I have to remind myself that it will be the first day of Spring in just 3 days time on March 20th! Yes, next Wednesday is down on the calender as the vernal equinox - where daylight hours begin to match those of darkness and the Northern Hemisphere warms up.... hurray, bring it on!

The very first signs of Spring have been with us for a a few weeks already of course with Snowdrops, Crocuses and Hazel Catkins bringing a bit of colour to the countryside and I noticed the Willow trees at Wheldrake coming into bud earlier this week. Haven't seen any Sand Martin records for Yorkshire yet but one in Liecestershire on the 14th with several more further South shows they are on their way up and they've had Swallows in Cornwall, Dorset and Ireland already!

Apart from my truly enjoyable working hours at Askham Bog, I've not been out much recently ....been taking advantage of this pre Spring lull to get a few things done around the house and when I have ventured abroad its still felt like Winter to me!

Dodging the snow flurries at Wheldrake Ings last week was kinda fun and as I sought refuge in Tower Hide my reward was a couple of drake Scaups in with the rest of the wildfowl. Too far away to photograph sadly because as you can from this view the light was good in between the showers.

These roaming Whooper Swans were a little closer (but not much!) and managed a couple of half decent shots with a lucky capture of a bit of argy bargy swan behaviour!

It was a shame the good light didn't remain long enough to get more pics because I was after some wildfowl in flight. There was a healthy number of Pintail on the reserve (I reckoned about 100) and I was dying to get one of those but had to settle for Comon Teal and a pretty grubby and hastily shot fly over of a small group of Pink Footed Geese

Common Teal

Pink Footed Geese

 

It was certainly no day for a surprise early Swallow or anything like that - but then Spring comes in many guises; depends of course where you are on this planet as to what may be that harbinger of warmer days ahead,but as I look out again on to settling snow in my garden, I'm secretly chuffed to have caught a few of Wheldrake's own symbols of Spring .... Curlews calling and drifting overhead
























Pussy Willow starting to bud and alongside the pathways

 

...... and the occasional Oystercatcher probing for worms that are themselves starting to wriggle again.



















Highlight birds on the day were some good flocks of waders with maybe 120 Dunlin, 20ish Ruff, about 500 Lapwing, 50 Golden Plover and 2 Snipe. Still plenty of ducks and geese about with maybe 100 Pintail, 70 Gadwall, 150 Shoveler, 200 Tufted Duck, 2 Scaup, 8 Goldeneye, 150 Pochard in amongst the many hundreds of Wigeon, Teal and Mallard. With a brisk and chilly Easterly blowing a couple of hours in Tower Hide was not good for my hands and as the light began to fade I gave up on trying to pick out anything special like a Glaucous or Med Gull amongst the other gulls coming into roost and sought refuge!



Road trip to Hampshire ...Brents & Sanderlings a plenty plus a couple of goons!

Another whistle stop road trip down to Hampshire to visit friends and squeeze in a bit of birding last week. We shouldn't be surprised I suppose but once again the weather was against us for all but a brief window of sunshine on Wednesday afternoon / eve, otherwise it was cold and decidedly gloomy! Great views of Red Kites coming into roost in the mist on the way down nr Newbury and we must have topped 20 in total whilst journeying ... they really have spread far and wide in the UK and always a treat to see.

Farlington Marshes is always a handy reserve to visit down there and although the morning was grey there were plenty of waders, ducks and geese about plus a couple of Song Thrushes and a Sparrowhawk.

Fly by Redshank

The geese were almost all Brents with maybe something like 300 on the water and many hundreds flying overhead ...... now I have to say that the light they were flying in was as gloomy as a graveyard on a wet Sunday afternoon, so most post production needed and not quite sure what I did with this but they look better than they ever did in the viewfinder!

This was a loner..... there's always one looking for a passport pic!




Talking of passport pics don't use these boys, you might get arrested for more than being in possession of  living head fur and a cockney rebelesque 70's pose!!

  The birds they must have pulled in their prime!

 

Ok, I'll get some stick for that but back to some birds with feathers as well as a pulse here's a few cracking Sanderling pics on Eastney Beach ..... and for a few hours the sun did shine!

Sanderlings are one of my favourite waders, nearly always doing something .... this little tussle over a juicy mollusc went on for several minutes

 

Until the victor flew away with the spoils!

 

Closely followed by a hungry gang .........

 

 

And then time for a rest .... didn't notice at the time but one of the Sanderlings has colour coded tags on its legs. I found a site on the net where you can report such tags and obtain a history of the birds movements (http://www.waderstudygroup.org/res/project/sand-colrings-en.php) so hopefully I'll get something back soon.

 

We had a single Mediterranean Gull fly past but sadly too quick for me to get the camera on it ..... Here's a few 'too far away but reasonable images' 

 

Oystercatcher feeding on a jetty at Eastney beach

Hardly in the 'reasonable' category but this was the only Sparrowhawk and only posting because Mark missed it ... here you go mate!

Mr & Mrs Common Teal out for a stroll

 

Later in the day we went back to Farlington Marshes and were rewarded by an impressive gull roost of 2000 plus Black Headed Gulls and many more waders including both Golden and Grey Plover, Dunlin, Knot and Black Tailed Godwit.

 

Then the sun went down and it was time to think about heading back to Yorkshire!