Morning mist

Silverdale Moss

The morning mist was patchy and ephemeral this morning. It coincided with the only break in the clouds we saw all day. Within minutes of me arriving on the marsh in the early morning, a light breeze picked up, heralding a change of weather as cloud rolled in and the mist vanished.

Silverdale Moss is owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, it was pasture when they took it over 10 or so years ago. They have dammed the ditches and created new open water areas. The marsh is filling with reed swamp with reedmace and rushes. The hope is that this will attract bitterns and other reedbed birds, and certainly the area is well used now in the breeding season by marsh harriers. The RSPB are trying to increase the area of reedbed locally and create a network of closely spaced wetland reserves to allow populations of rare reedbed birds to increase in the area.

There are usually a lot of teals and other ducks, but this morning there were just a few mallards. I wonder if this is related to recent wildfowling activity, the neighbouring land is owned by one of the shooting estates, and there was a shooting party entering the area on Thursday as I was taking the photograph of the two towers.

Every year I keep a bird list of species seen in the UK. I try hard not to be a twitcher, I don't chase rarities (unless that is, they turn up within a 20 mile radius), and I fit birding in with other activities. So this year, I shall chart progress in this journal. There follows what will be for non-birders a very dull list of species, so look away now:

Dunnock, blackbird, robin, wood pigeon, coal tit, jackdaw, collared dove, black headed gull, house sparrow, starling, blue tit, greenfinch, nuthatch, magpie, greylag goose, goldfinch, bullfinch, carrion crow, chaffinch, wren, raven, buzzard, heron, pheasant, mallard, mistle thrush, great spotted woodpecker, snipe, reed bunting, green woodpecker, fieldfare, great tit, jay, feral pigeon, redshank, curlew, common gull, oystercatcher, moorhen, peregrine, marsh tit. 41 species.

It will be interesting (for me at least) to see at what point in the year the number of blips overtakes the number of bird species seen: sometime in May or June perhaps.

Happy New Year!