Last day of winter!

    When I first visited Foula, Shetland in the early 1970's I met a chap called John. He was telling me one day that they only had two kinds of weather on Foula, bad weather and good weather. My visit at the end of May was about half way through their good weather! I thought how nice to just have 2 kinds of weather, and so ever since I have had my own version of what John said. I only have winter and summer. My winter starts when the clocks change in October. My summer starts on December 22nd when the nights start to get lighter. So today is my last day of winter.

I started out at Bank Island, near Wheldrake.

A very cloudy day, but no mist or wind, and the temperature was about 4 degrees.

From cheesecake hide I could see lots of ducks.

The vast majority were wigeon, with a few mallard and shoveler. 33 pintails, and 11 shelduck were also on the water. Deer were feeding on the far side of the water.

Then a marsh harrier flew over and all the birds took to the air. They all settled back on the water once the harrier had flown off towards Wheldrake Ings. A canada goose was dead in the water and will no doubt make good eating for something.

I then drove further down the valley to Bubwith. I parked in the picnic car park and walked across the road and scanned Bubwith Ings. The water level had gone down since my last visit and there was no sign of any geese or swans. I returned to my car and drove back to North Duffield Carrs. From the Geoff Smith hide I could see a black swan, 14 whooper swans and 9 mute swans in the distance. A chap I know, who with his wife had been on a couple of my trips to Mull, came into the hide. He had been to the furthest hide and had seen some mallard and teal. He was telling me that he was out birding alone as his wife is now suffering from dementia, so he was able get out when she had a carer. You just don't know what will happen next!

I walked down to other hide

 and I could see the mallard and teal he had mentioned. A wren was busy flicking in and out of the reeds in front of the hide,

A young mute swan was on its feeding close to the hide

Then a male mute swan appeared and chased it away.

I am assuming that this is part of their normal behaviour in discouraging young to fend for themselves. However further over on the reserve another male swan started to chase a couple of cygnets and their parents flew off with them, so not all swans behave the same.

A marsh harrier flew over

which put the teal to flight

the starlings were also disturbed

At that point I decided to head for home as the light was fading fast.