Sunshine has flowers blooming & wild ducks on nest
WHILE walking to the Lapwing hide I hear a black cap singing near the Ramsar hide. Across from the path in the wet meadow the soft yellow of blooming cowslips draw my eye and I go over for a closer look. The warm weather has brought the meadow to life. Lady smock with its tall stocks topped with pink flowers has opened. It is the food plant of the orange tip butterfly, spotted around the reserve this week after emerging from winter chrysalis state. Adults drink its necatar while larvae eat the leaves.
I also spot a snake’s head fritillary flowering - it’s fragile, checked flower hanging in the traditional drooping manner. I see that several have flowered but the slugs and insects have beaten me and my macro lens to all but one.
Leaves of common spotted orchids are poking up through the soil all over the area and marsh marigolds are blooming along the water’s edge. Purple trumpets of ground ivy and tiny mauve speedwell flowers are blooming. A clump of white dead nettle hosts a common carder bumble bee while small daisies dot the grass. Small dense heads of ribwort plantain heads poke above the greenery.
I hear a peregrine shrieking from the hangar as I head further down the path. A pair of goldfinch has built a nest in the hedgerow near the Holt building - nearby I spot my first red campion flowers of the year.
From the lapwing hide I watch the lapwing flying displays then a pair begins to mate. I worry this may mean their nest or chicks may have fallen victim to predators and they are trying again. I hear a female lapwing give contact calls to her chicks and find two of them in the long grass through my binoculars. These chicks are larger now and less vulnerable but the appearance of a peregrine over the meadow sends all adult lapwings skyward in defence of the youngsters. The peregrine makes off with an unfortunate mallard duckling.
Three greylag gosling are feeding with their parents while a grey heron fishes in the channel at the far end of the wet grassland. I spot three male gadwall ducks on the wet grassland. We are only seeing male tufted ducks, pochards and shovellers about as the females are hidden, sitting on eggs. A family of Canada geese have been waddling in and out of the protection of the reedbed, swimming along the main ditch beside the long path.
