Welney - 7/1/2018

 

 Welney is famous for its wintering WHOOPER SWANS with over 7000 present

 
A trip to the fens was the order of the day, to go to an area I don't visit that often. For although there are some great reserves over there, the actual landscape is as barren as the Sahara, just miles and miles of featureless intensive farmland, dotted with the odd jewel.
Welney was the first visit of the day, a place I go to on and off, but have always had a good time there. It is an area of flooded grassland in the fens, where water drains in from the surrounding farmland, like an anti flood defence. I have seen many good species there, and there is the wildlife spectacular of thousands of ducks and swans attracted by the huge amount of wetland...
Yet it didn't happen. Massive rains had resulted in wall to wall flooding, which created this huge body of water, which wasn't the best habitat, resulting in only a few birds dotted round the area.
Only the observatory was open - all the other hide were cut off by the flooding, maybe up to four or five feet deep. We had brought wellies thinking we could be able to walk to the other hides, but no...
There was a flock of POCHARDS immediately in front of the observatory with a few TUFTED DUCK and COOT among them. WIGEON were more distant, with only single numbers of GADWALL, SHOVELER and TEAL.

POCHARD and WHOOPER SWANS

 



Lady Fen, an area of wet grassland reclaimed from arable fields, situated behind the visitor's centre, held a nice flock of WHOOPER SWANS, several hundred of them wee roosting by the flashes of water present. There were few other birds there, four PINTAIL flew over, and a REDSHANK was present. In the distance six ROE DEERS were grazing in some arable field. A flock of BLACK TAILED GODWITS flew over the car park.
Outside the café windows as we drank some coffee there were flocks of TREE SPARROWS, a bird that's rare by me, but whenever a site has them, then they have them in large numbers. Around four  HOUSE SPARROWS were present giving good comparison, the TREE SPARROWS were a much richer chestnut colour. Also present around the feeders were small numbers of REED BUNTINGS, not a bird to associate with garden bird feeders.
So with nothing much to do we stayed there for a couple of hours, half that spent in the café drinking coffee. We hung around for the SWAN feed, where a man goes out and feeds the birds immediately in front of the observatory. Its kind of like a stunt to get birds to come really close to the observatory, so people inside can ooh and ahh at the swans, rather than appreciating the wilderness for what it is, one of  the best wetlands in Europe. Its all a bit artificial really, but it gets the punters in and if that means more money going back to preserving Welney, then its not all bad.
To show how flooded the reserve was, the man feeding the birds was dressed in a wet suit, and the water came up to his chest.

 

 

 Swan feeding immediately in front of the observatory

 

So bit of a disappointing visit really, with not really much to do or see. As with all birding it is a bit of a hit or miss, because like a lot of reserves it has a dual purpose as a flood defence as well, draining most of East Anglia, so when it rains the water comes off the farmlands from a massive area. When its not so flooded it usually is a good reserve, with lots to see and this is the only duff visit I have had, and I would still recommend anyone interested to go and see. The more people go to appreciate these places the more power there will be to protect them.
Having seen everything we had time on our hands and decided to move onto another reserve covered in the next blog.