Ipswich - the Belstead Brook area - 5/2/2019

 GREY WAGTAIL along the river at Ashground Plantation

 

Being an urban area Ipswich doesn't really come across as having good birding sites. However in the southern belly of the town is an area of great habitats that would be important if they were found outside in the country. Being in an urban area these places are constantly under threat from development, and there have been some high profile cases of their destruction nearly happening. Collectively they are known as the Belstead Brook reserves, due to the little river that joins them all up.
The most important of these habitats is Spring Wood an ancient forest famous for its bluebell displays. However today although noisy through birds starting to make territories, the woods didn't hold anything unusual, although a singing SONG THRUSH, was my first proper one of the Spring. The path leads through Spring Wood and comes out at Bobbit's Lane Meadow and completes a circle back to the car park. The meadows are another reserve and they have a gradation from dry grassland, gradually getting wetter, to turn to reeds and ultimately a pond. On the pond was an Ipswich mega in the form of two SHOVELLERS, a male and female. However the male wasn't in breeding plumage finery and was barely more decorated than the female. They were with four GADWALL, themselves rare in Ipswich, I have only seen them here in the town.

The strange male SHOVELLER

 



Having returned to the car park I turned my attention to Ashground Plantation, an overgrown area of alder carr. Usually at this time of year the forest floor is under several inches of water, but with this dry winter it was parched. There were lots of birds, with TREECREEPER and GOLDCREST amongst the commoner birds. A pair of CHIFFCHAFF were along the river as well as a GREY WAGTAIL and a flock of 20 SISKIN high in the alders. I left the area and drove  on to Stoke Park, a large urban park, mainly grass, but with some old trees. The usual parkland birds were present, STOCK DOVES, MISTLE THRUSHES and GREEN WOODPECKERS, birds that like a light scattering of trees.
Despite being on the doorstep of thousands of people it is quite easy to get away from people in these places. I would usually think that was a good thing, as would most people, but it also means people don't understand what they have in these places. These sites are only diagnosed as Local Nature Reserves, surely the least protection possible, and if people don't appreciate what they have here, it could all be lost the next time they are threatened by development.

Book Review - Curlew Moon by Mary Colwell

No book of recent times has shed light on a glaring conservation issue in such a way as Curlew Moon. The book is a journey through the UK and Ireland, in the areas of the country where curlews live and charts their alarming decline. The UK and Ireland at times hold half of the world's curlew population and a quarter of its breeding population. Yet this responsibility to protect the bird has largely been neglected and in a lot of places the population is crashing, at a great rate.
The curlew is well known as a bird, our biggest wading bird, with its distinctive curved bill. It is common on the estuaries in winter and is well known to mountain walkers in summer where it nests on the fells. Yet a few pairs still hang on in lowland England and this is where the front line in curlew conservation is taking place, where if they disappeared from here then it may be too late to save the species altogether in the rest of the country.
In Curlew Moon the author Mary Colwell takes a 500 mile journey through curlew country, from Ireland, through Wales, the Midlands and Yorkshire, at a time when the curlews should be nesting. She really shows her passion for the birds, and her attempts to stay positive in the face of such gloom. What is evident from the book is how few curlews are left in the places she visits that once held so many. The author tries her best to bring the landscape alive, how they are attractive to the birds but there are so few curlews left now, often just the odd solitary pair seen in these places, the last hangers on to a country that doesn't want them. Habitat destruction, disturbance, an increase in predators means too few curlews are raising young to replace the current population. Worse off seems Ireland, where the population has crashed greatest of all, but there doesn't seem the combined effort to protect the few remaining pairs left there.
In her journey in Curlew Moon Mary Colwell meets the people who try to protect the curlews, and a part of this book is about their struggles, the single person facing all the different forces that are against curlews, their often hard fought struggle to help this species survive. The conservation of curlews is as much about their effort as it is about the large organisations, the local heroes who work tirelessly to protect the birds.
Although about curlews Curlew Moon is a daming state of the countryside in general, where the niche and unusal animals have no real place in modern day agriculture and hence the modern day landscape. The author  really brings alive what curlews mean to the landscape, through lore, the place names, poetry, how much a longing for place can be created by the bubbling sound the curlew makes, but also how much has been forgotten in modern times, that most farmers and users of the countryside no longer remember them or what they meant.
What Curlew Moon leaves us with then, is not something positive, there is so much to do to even stop the decline, but provides a germ, a turn around in perception, and an identity that there is something wrong and a need for something to be done. With a joint effort, maybe, just maybe, the curlew may survive as a breeding bird in this country and its bubbling song may be heard by future generations. With people like Mary Colwell behind them the curlew has at least some hope of survival in this country.

The Big Garden Birdwatch - 26/1/2019

The Big Garden Birdwatch event is simply the counting of birds in your garden over an hour's period. Its the biggest such event in the world and allows people to chart the fortunes of our more common birds. I have a large suburban garden, which connects with other gardens to create a large area of habitat, with plenty of trees and unkempt areas, and so attracts birds. Here are the results:

Wood Pigeon - 1
Starling - 28
Goldfinch - 2
Great Tit -2
Blue Tit - 2
Blackbird - 1
Crow - 2
Collared Dove - 2
Magpie -  2
Chaffinch - 1

The numbers and variety are pretty much typical for my garden. The starling flock seems large, but I have loose flocks of several hundred birds wintering in my street, and sometimes I can have close to a hundred birds in my garden.

WAXWINGS - Ipswich - 24/1/2019

Most wildlife tends to shun civilisation, its usually a given that the further away from humanity you get the more wildlife there is. One nice exception to this is the WAXWING, a winter visitor to the continent that is mainly fund in towns and cities. Maybe because cities are warmer or maybe because of the large amount of exotic bushes and trees laden with berries, they can be found anywhere in the urban environment, and there is no fixed location to where they may be, any place is just as good as any other.

A bit of luck is always needed to find these birds and that was what I had today. Driving down Defoe Road, Ipswich, I looked up at some birds on a telephone wire, and saw the WAXWINGS distinctive crest - which separates them at first glance from the more common STARLINGS. I pulled over had a brief look before racing home for my camera. The flock was around twenty strong, the birds would fly in at twenty minute interludes to rest on the telephone wires before flying down to feed on a berry laden roadside tree before flying off after a couple of minutes later. It was a dingy sodden day so a lot of the photos came out dark and the birds didn't hang around long enough to get the best composition. It also felt a bit unnerving loitering around a housing estate with a big long lens camera, just wondering when the twitching curtains would turn into calls to the police. I joke about the last sentence, but you do have to watch out with photography, a lot of people do seem to take it to heart that you are photographing them, even when you are most definitely not.

Anyway I was going to spend the day at Alton Water, but when it started to snow decided to call it off - annoyingly after that initial flurry it didn't snow again that day, but seeing WAXWINGS more than made up for it. They are an irruption species, some years there are large numbers, sometimes very little. This is a little winter, so far, with few reported so its a good sighting to have.

Newbourne Springs, Hemley & Waldringfield - 14/1/2019

I'm always on the lookout for new birding locations, those areas on the map that are often overlooked by those who long for the easy birding at Minsmere. Don't get me wrong Minsmere is great but everyone knows about it, I know about it, and I yearn for pastures new.

On the map, to the east of Ipswich, I saw several promising locations - a nature reserve - Newbourne Springs, and two walks along the river Deben - Hemley and Waldringfield. But here are the reasons why these places are overlooked, they are not great places for birds.
Newbourne Springs is a Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserve where large amounts of alder carr, with smaller areas of fen meadow lie in a valley bottom, with dry woodland and an area of heathland on its slopes. Its a medium sized Wildlife Trust reserve, around 40 acres or so, equivalent in size to somewhere like Sculthorpe Moor. A large SISKIN flock was in the alders, I heard a TREECREEPER, and the first tentative song of the SONG THRUSH was heard - about a month early - brought on by the mellow weather. But mainly it was just the commoner birds present. I plan to come back in June to look for the wild flowers of the marshes, which I think is the main attraction of the reserve.

About ten minutes away from Newbourne is the village of Hemley which is the starting location for a short walk along the Deben. It was very much the last outpost of civilisation, the end of the road with nothing human beyond. The river Deben is the smallest of the Suffolk estuaries and has no real nature reserves on its course, but apart from Woodbridge and a few small villages, is very much unspoilt.

Around Hemley is the largest area of saltmarsh on the estuary, with the river having breached through an old sea wall. The estuary was at mid tide and was fairly quiet with few flocks, mainly of the usual culprits of WADERS and DUCKS. Five SEALS were chilling out on the mud just upriver.
After Hemley I had enough time to go to Waldringfield. The river was wider here and had more mud, but nothing unusual.
Sometimes exploration can lead to something magical, a secret in the countryside, but not today. With work and everything its hard finding the time to go birding and sometimes taking a punt on a place you don't know could just end up being - meh. So expect more reports from now on from Minsmere.

The River Gipping Lakes - 10/1/2019

I had some time this week, using up some of last year's paid holiday, so I decided to have a walk from my home in North West Ipswich to Needham Market, a route that follows the river Gipping, passing a lot of gravel pits along the way. As the crow flies its about six miles, but walking along the bendy river its probably closer to nine, a big difference when you're walking.
I go to these places quite a lot, its my local patch, and I have written about them on different posts in the past. My main gripe, is that despite being an assortment of lakes of different shapes and sizes they still don't attract many birds. Some are intensely managed as fishing lakes, others just aren't that good. But despite this they are still the best birdwatching sites in the area.
The first site I reached was Barham Pits, three different lakes, heavily fished. They are under new management, and a big fence has been put around the bottom pit - Pit 'B'. I guess this is to stop mink and otter from eating the fish, but I think its also to stop people who are walking the public footpath from walking around the site. Time was you could walk anywhere, just chill out watching the lake from a fisherman's berth, but now non anglers are excluded.
Around the pit 'management' work has been undertaken which basically has involved massacring the lake side alders leaving the place bald and ugly. The same can also be said of Pippins Lake near Pipps Ford, where again the lake side alders have been cut down including a lot of really big trees. As this lake isn't fished it beggars belief why they should be so drastic, destroying so much for so little.
Away from this gripe the bird watching was ok. The best sighting of the day was a PINK FOOTED GOOSE, a single bird amongst a large GREYLAG GOOSE flock. It had a pink and black bill, pink legs (obviously), was smaller and darker than the GREYLAGS. I had my camera with me, but after I took the photo a message came up saying there was no card in the camera - I had left it at home in the computer - a rookie mistake. That is why there are no photos for today.
DUCK numbers were rather small, with most pits having small numbers of TUFTED DUCK, COOT and SWANS. Best numbers were of 27 GADWALL on Pippin's Lake and 13 TUFTED DUCK on Shamford Mere. Even Pipps Ford, usually the best place for birds around here was empty, with just a GREEN SANDPIPER on the working quarry area.
Small birds weren't really that active today, most were still in winter mode and hadn't started thinking about breeding yet. Several GREY WAGTAILS were seen along the river, a common resident that breeds along here. Several TIT flocks held a CHIFFCHAFF, a bird that winters in this country in small numbers next to watery areas. A LESSER REDPOLL was found near Barham Pit B, but the only really decent bird flock was a group of fifty SISKIN, making a lot of noise in alders along the river by the Pink foot.
It took me four hours to walk this stretch of the river, about the same amount of time I took at Welney. Some sites reward you for the effort, while those that take more effort sometimes don't. This is a local patch, the nearest to me, so its a place I have to go to really even if there isn't much there. I enjoy doing it anyway so its no hassle.

Welney and the Ouse Washes - 7/1/2019

In the Cambridgeshire fens, an area so intensively farmed it has as much wildlife as the Sahara, is one of the country's greatest spectacles. For in a small strip of land half a mile wide and twenty miles long is one of the greatest concentrations of wintering wildfowl in the country. We're not talking about thousands of birds, but many tens of thousands, in many cases of just one species. Welcome to the Ouse Washes.

Male POCHARD - common on the deeper water in front of the main obs

 



This was a great birding opportunity and for me this was the first major bird watching sessions of the new year, away from the local patch. Year listing is an activity that pretty much every bird watcher does, even if half heartedly, and it can be summed up as keeping a list of all the bird species seen in a calendar year. The really serious birder, or twitcher usually aims to get over 300, while the more general birder, such as myself, usually sticks to around 200, which, when you think of it, is still a lot. The Ouse Washes are a great place for seeing different species throughout the year, and I got this year off to good start, seeing a lot of birds.
The northern part of the Ouse Washes is owned by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, and they have created a really full on birding experience, with a large café and a heated observatory, providing some of the best facilities for any bird reserve in the world. In a sense it brings the birds to you rather than the other way round. This takes away all that hardship that usually entails in finding birds.
The main observatory was the main port of call. It is heated with comfy chairs and big windows looking out onto the reserve, a watery wonderland, throbbing with birds.

The observatory looking out on the SWAN FEED

 



I found it a bit of a cheat. Birdwatching should be about freezing your arse off in a cold hide, with the birds a mile off, a distant spec in the telescope. But here the birds are right up close to the observatory, in many cases just a couple of metres away. POCHARD like the deeper water immediately in front of the obs, with two species of SWAN present, the MUTE and the WHOOPER both large birds, attracted to this reserve in their thousands.
There is some controversy with Welney, and that's the SWAN FEEDING. Its an event where a man goes out front of the obs and throws out grain to attract the SWANS (which are wild) to come right out in front, so people like me can gawp at them and take photos. In many ways its like a zoo, but also it makes wildlife accessible, and most of the time wildlife isn't, to people unable to go out and find it.

The SWAN FEED - the birds were literally feeding out of the wheelbarrow

 

Star species of the day was a RING NECKED DUCK, a transatlantic species, which having accidently arrived here has no way to get back across the ocean, a bird that is doomed to wander the wetlands of the UK for the rest of its life all alone. Also present from Chile, so is most likely to be an escape from a private collection, was a RINGED TEAL, which was a lovely little bird.

Most of the Ouse Washes was flooded, like a giant lake, with raised banks providing islands for roosting birds. Large numbers of GODWITS were about, with small numbers of other WADERS - REDSHANK, DUNLIN, SNIPE and RUFF, worth the effort of finding them.
Unusually, because there isn't much grass to attract them, there was a large variety of GEESE. Fifty PINK FOOTED GEESE, flew in and although common in coastal Norfolk are quite rare this far inland. Three WHITE FRONTED GEESE were present and a single BARNACLE also adding to the diversity.
A female MARSH HARRIER was seen quartering distantly over the other side, occasionally putting wildfowl into the air.

A RINGED TEAL - an escape from someone's wildfowl collection

 



Away from the main obs there were several hides and out in the more wilder areas of the reserve. The main DUCK species out on the reserve was the WIGEON, and there were thousands of them, but they were also supported by large numbers of TEAL and PINTAIL, the latter a reserve speciality, you often don't get them together in such large numbers.
The furthest hide provided the biggest spectacle. Here there were still areas of grassland just about still present above the flood, and this provided the best habitat for feeding DUCKS. Also here was the third species of SWAN the BEWICK'S. This SWAN is undergoing quite a lot of difficulty at the moment, with the bird arriving in this country in very small numbers, with the species rare even here. The problems are never easy to solve, and like a lot of "British" birds a large part of their lives are led outside the country and is the case with a lot of our birds its an international problem to solve.
The skies around the furthest edges of the reserve were whirling with huge numbers of LAPWING and GOLDEN PLOVERS, creating clouds that would twist and turn and throb, formed of many thousands of birds. It was truly an amazing spectacle and just shows the possibilities - if you create and protect reserves the birds will come.
I spent quite some time here and it was worth it, I saw a lot, and for a bird reserve, was quite a sociable place. I still had some time left so I decided to visit the other reserve on the Ouse Washes, one owned by the RSPB.

RSPB Ouse Washes
Being rather more low key than the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Welney, people don't often realise the RSPB reserve is much bigger. It has a small car park, a little visitor's centre, but crucially lots of hides, the cold wooden ones, not anything heated.
The reserve is similar to Welney, with perhaps more trees, but is made up of flooded grassland. The sheer number of birds is also the same. To look out of a hide and see the many thousands of birds is so overwhelming, I mean searching through all of that to find something unusual can be a tall order. Annoyingly, most of the birds on the RSPB reserve were on the other side of the washes which made birding all the more difficult.
I only had an hour here before the light became too poor to see anything. It was pretty much the same species as at Welney, with the exception of a male GOLDENEYE, and a KINGFISHER that whizzed by, seen funnily enough from the Kingfisher Hide.

WHOOPER SWAN

 



Well there really was a lot at the Ouse Washes, both in quantity and quality, it really is a great bird reserve, easily one of the best in the country. If you have any spare time over the next couple of months its worth a look for the sheer spectacle, but being a great reserve it is worth a look at any time. Its just a shame its surrounded by a dead zone of intensive farming, as is so common of a lot of reserves, big and small they are often isolated jewels in a harsh landscape of factory farming. The way it is at the moment, wildlife has only a toe hold in the countryside strange as that may seem. I look forward to a time when the countryside is worked in a more enlightened way.