Surprise Surprise!
Much to my delight there were 500 Whooper Swans on site on Tuesday (18th) 350 more than the count of 150 the morning before. So I grab the bins and the scope and started counting not only the numbers of birds but also the number of cygnets and the brood size. At the moment this is a fairly easy process as the cygnets will tend to stick close to their parents. However much like our children the older and more confident they get as the winter progresses, the more they will venture away.
The brood count gives us very good information on how well the breeding season has been. This year we fear it to have been a bad one as there was a long frost into May just when the Whoopers start to breed perhaps resulting in less cygnets hatching and surviving. The count I did on Tuesday will contribute a little to the more in-depth and co-orientated counts which will go on throughout the country. These coordinated counts taking place through winter will gives us really good information on how successful breeding was this year.
With so many swans on site the swan feeds have begun outside two of our hides (Swan Link and The Raines Observatory). The feeding brings the swans up close to the hides ensuring brilliant close quarter viewing of up to 2000 swans in the deep of winter.
However even the Whooper spectacle is challenged by the by the sight 15000- 17000 Pinkfoot Geese returning each evening in huge V shaped skeens, to roost in the safety of Martin Mere. This really is one of the sights in winter and I personally never get tired of seeing it. However we haven’t yet hit the heights of last year yet when we had a record 36,000 geese on the site one Dawn count. While these large flocks of Geese are generally Pinkfeet there is always the possibility of spotting a rarety amongst them with a Pale-bellied Brent Goose being seen yesterday by one of the bird watchers.
Over the next few days we are expecting more and more Whoopers to be coming in so keep your eyes on the blog and WWT sightings to see if any of our regular individually tagged Whoopers have arrived.
