Snow and ice disperses wildfowl and waders plus WeBS count for yesterday
It snowed all day yesterday, a slight thaw followed by a re-freeze led to some path closures and diversions today, we scraped and gritted to open access to Discovery Hide and Estuary Tower. The cold weather has meant that 75% of our freshwater is frozen with congregations of wildfowl at the South Lake, Big pen, Rushy and out on the Severn estuary. Waders numbers are low as these birds spread out over a wide area to forage.
The Top New Piece, Bottom New Piece, Dumbles scrape, Long Ground Pool and Tack Piece are all frozen over.
Bittern on South Lake
The regular Bittern was again showing on the South Lake, it was on the far East shoreline of the deeper unfrozen section of lake, creeping through the willows and sedge so could go missing at times. A female Goldeneye was among the ducks.
Greater Scaup
The 1cy male Greater Scaup was caught during a Pintail catch in the swan pipe this morning, we are fitting radio tags to find out the movements of these birds locally as part of of a functionally linked land project. This is to ascertain if current protections are sufficient for a range of species that rely upon the Severn and adjacent areas to survive. The G.Scaup was checked over, ringed and released soon after, it spent the day on the Big Pen pond with the Tufted Ducks.
Bewick's Swans
Fifty present on the Rushy at dawn yesterday and today. Some headed out to the Tack Piece during the middle part of the day.
Russian White-fronted Geese
The flock have been feeding in fields NE of the car park, between here and the canal but are very hard to see. They did make a brief flight to the Tack Piece.
WeBS Count for Sunday 11 December 2022
Low numbers due to ice coverage and poor visibility.
11 Cormorant
10 Little Egret (nine roosted at least).
2 Great Egret (both roosted).
9+ probably 13 Cattle Egret (roosted).
8 Grey Heron
1 Bittern
15+ Cranes
101 Mute Swan
50 Bewick's Swan
98 Russian White-fronted Geese
393 Greylag
284 Canada Geese
1 Mandarin
276 Shelduck
625 Wigeon
27 Gadwall
429 Teal
683 Mallard
148 Pintail
145 Shoveler
81 Pochard
1cy Greater Scaup
Goosander (drake on the Severn)
400 Tufted Duck
Goldeneye (male in with collection birds)
5 Water Rail
40 Moorhen
88 Coot
1 Avocet
62 Golden Plover
255 Lapwing
7 Curlew
288 Dunlin
1 Little Stint
3 Redshank
22 Snipe
1 Woodcock
3 Kingfisher
3 Little Grebe
323 Black-headed Gull
7 Lesser Black-backed Gull
28 GBB Gull
18 Herring Gull
109 Common Gull
