Saturday 24 March 2018

Micklemere - 15/3/2018


I had never been to Mickle Mere before, but with a trip to Lackford today, I decided to tack on a visit to here as well. And I was surprised, it was actually really good, especially for a site in mid Suffolk. Away from the coast there are few wetlands of any importance, really just Lackford and Lakenheath, and now, new to me at least, Mickle Mere.


It is an area of heavily flooded grassland, that was very popular with water birds, looked over by a hide. There were over a hundred WIGEON present, mainly in the area where the flooded part met the grassland. Smaller numbers of other wildfowl were present including the SHOVELLER above.


A family party of EGYPTIAN GEESE with an incredible eight goslings were present. They had all survived though the recent snows, and are bound to grow up to bolster the feral population present in the UK.
 


One BARNACLE GOOSE was present amongst the GREYLAGS, I have no idea if its wild or feral, it really is hard to tell now, but I will still count it.
So a good site which I will pay more attention to in the future, the only let down being its small size, and the fact the only access was to the hide, it wasn't really walking territory. But wetlands, especially wet grassland, are extremely rare, especially in a fairly biologically poor area like mid Suffolk.

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