Plucked and seasoned...

 

Today is my first birding visit to the patch in 8 years and boy has it changed! 

I thought I'd start, seasonally enough, as I used to do at the Eastern end of the reserve and work back towards Lapwing Lane, checking off the Eastern Reedbed, Millbrook Pool, Pumphouse Pool, Birchwood Pool and Lapwing Lake, taking in the Feeding Station at the end of Lapwing Lane, to get a 'baseline' for my blog continuation.  

So, last night, I set my three alarms for 7am, to head straight out with my borrowed Opticrons and see what was about. First thing I noticed was that my capacity to actually get out of bed at that time of the morning has suffered what one might call 'slippage' in the intervening years (I am now biologically an Owl and not a Lark it seems...) and so I didn't arrive onsite until 9:23am.

On the drive there I plucked a species tally from the air (37) and guessed that Robin would be the first bird I got. I was wrong. It was Mistle Thrush, followed by Robin (doh!), which in turn was followed in quick succession by Dunnock, Magpie, Wood Pigeon, calling Nuthatch and Pheasant, and fly overs by Blackbird, Black-headed Gull and Feral Pigeon - unimpressive stuff. But, it was a start, and as I'm writing this, I have no idea how close to the 'plucked' tally of 37 species I am/was - I'll do that at the end!

Today I decided to park alongside the car park and walk the Eastern end. In the past, I used to drive up to the reedbed, do a bit of birding, drive to Colin's Hide on the east end of Pumphouse, do a bit... and so on. Problem was that as it had been so long, I didn't know whether the barrier would be locked or not and so decided not to risk it. I needn't have bothered... the barrier had long since fallen into disrepair and the warehouses seemingly abandoned and graffitied..

It did not bode well and Birchwood Strip to the left, once a throbbing little woodland full of songs and calls was rather too quiet and I pondered if the single Cormorant that flew over might be a portent of even less to come :/ I wasn't that far off the mark...

By 9:40am I was at Pumphouse west hide... well, I say 'hide'... it's not. Not anymore. Now it's just a screen and of course without a roof, the benches were wet. Today the weather was fine. Some blue sky, no wind, a little chilly, but gone it seems are the days when one could hunker down for hours with a coffee, nice and dry, out of the rain and watch the comings and goings on the pool in relative comfort. There is nothing there anymore to hold one for more than a few minutes and it's a shame. It was a great place to just sit and watch 'the nature'... the price paid across the Reserve for the thoughtless few who occasionally took over the shelters for drinking, smoking and pissing up the walls. Not sure where the 'Stellar Brigade' hang out these days, but there's evidence of their visits, even today...

Maybe the lack of a hide is fitting. There wasn't much to see. The thinnest covering of ice had pushed the couple of dozen waterfowl to the far end of the pool, just below Colin's and these mostly looked to be Coot...

The Eastern Reedbed and Millbrook Pool were even worse. There was nothing, literally NOTHING on or around Millbrook, not even a Mute Swan or Canada Goose... and the reedbed yielded just 2 Coots. There was nothing perched, nothing calling... it was quite simply - dead.

To be honest, I was pretty dejected... what HAS happened to the place? It used to be so rich in bird life, at least that's how I remember it. I suppose it might always have been quiet at this time of year... perhaps what I need is a frame of reference. Good idea Mark! Let's grab a 'bit-o-blog' from the same date (ish) previously and compare!

Here's what I wrote on 19th Jan, 10 years ago at the same locations... 

FLASHBACK...

I've decided to forgo my snipe hunt and try the east end of the reserve for Woodcock and Goosander. Not really sure why, given that neither have been seen at the east end for a while, but hey, ever the optimist me.
I'm driving along the track past Pumphouse Pool when I remember something... Somebody had posted up that they'd seen the male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in the trees along the embankment a few days ago. Deffo worth a look!

SO, windows down and I'm crawling along in the little Skoda on choke only, barely making a sound. It's almost like I'm driving an electric car. I scan every silver birch. No sign (or sound). There are Bullfinches though... a little chain of 'tu's flitting acros the road. I reach the Eastern Reedbed and park up. I'm sure there'll be Woodcock again today... Hmmm. Damn their cryptic hides. Seven of them and not a single one in view. Or maybe it's three. You see the thing is, I KNOW they're out there, but I'm buggered if I can see a single one of them! Ah well, nothing to be done but count the wildfowl on Millbrook Pool; 8 Shoveler, 55 Teal, 11 Mallard, 18 Gadwall, 2 Tufted Duck,15 Canada Goose, 2 Coot and a little surprise... the Little Grebes are back; a pair! The Eastern Reedbed though has refrozen... and there is no open water... BUT there are Water Rail; 2 calling and the first of the year for me. Good stuff!

...back to the now...

OK. It's not just me. 10 years ago, same place, same time there were good numbers of birds and species... and all that without the ubiquitous winter Bitterns!

Time to check the east end of Pumphouse... and again, it looks different...

... and I have to say, it filled me, mess as it was, with a little hope! Pumphouse used to be THE only place on the Eastern end of the patch for waders, until Crassula took over and attempts to flood it out resulted in the total loss of the pool's muddy margins and turned it into just another duck pond. Could these draggings of mud and sand represent an attempt to return the pool to its former glory? I do hope so! And the bonus was I got to count the waterfowl I had spotted from the other end, up close and personal - 21 Coot, 2 pairs Gadwall, 1 pair Teal, 2 pairs  Shoveler, 1 Moorhen, 3 Little Grebe - that's a bit better, though still not a patch (pun intended) on 10 years ago when there were  "7 Wigeon, 52 Teal, 15 Mallard, 14 Gadwall, 10 Tufted Duck, 2 Moorhen, 2 Coot, 1 Grey Heron. 

Next up was, Birchwood Pool. Now, this has/had three hides: East, South and West, but one (the east hide) is now also a screen with wet benches, although thankfully the other two are a bit more 'intact'... BUT, here's the thing - somebody has renamed the buggers! They all have these flash carved signs on them...

The east hide is now 'Fox Hide', the south 'Strip Hide' (don't even go there...) and the west hide is now 'Grebe Hide'. WTF? I mean what the actual F**k? Sure they look 'nice', but the whole place now feels like it's been 'parkified' for ramblers, joggers and dog walkers. No longer the hidden gem among reserves, now instead, 'somewhere nice to go for a Sunday stroll.' Moore! What have you become?!

I guess the problem started when the rubbish tip closed and the tax-relief money for reserve management vanished... ho hum. Gone are the halcyon gull days of old where you could see EIGHT species on the pool during the winter (including Iceland and Glaucous) which would draw in gullers from across the north-west. Back in the day, it was better than Seaforth some years...

Today there were just 7 Black-headed Gulls and 3 Common Gull among the 4 Tufted Duck, 2 Pochard, 12 Mallard, 4 Teal, 4 Gadwall, 2 Little Grebe, 1 Great Crested Grebe, 2 Coot, 2 Cormorant and single Grey Heron.

But all was not 'meh'... I did get Green Woodpecker among the pines between Millbrook and Pumphouse on the way and the 'Fox Hide' sign did bring back pleasant memories of hand-feeding a fox chicken crisps there one year. Perhaps that's how it got its name... that would be nice :)

...and so through the woods to the Feeding Station and a quick check of the old Tawny Owl roost tree. Needless to say, that too had changed from an ivy cover cluster of trees by a wooden bridge, to this soggy sight...

... and there was more soggy-ness. The little garden area near the gate on Lapwing Lane, once the winter haunt of Woodcock, was also under water...

... and so it went on, all the way to the Feeding Station...

Ah yes. The Feeding Station. Now, ordinarily, I never used to visit this much, apart from around this time of year for winter finches, Willow Tit and Coal Tit. It was tucked away in a grubby bit of woodland, but well supplied with feeders and was another 'get away' spot for a few minutes. Imagine my chagrin therefore when I arrived to find the 'parkification' of my beloved reserve had resulted in this!

No!!! Enough already! Pictures of birds. Please stop! There were six (I think) of these hideous things stapled to the old screen depicting >30 species. Yeah right! Back in the day... maybe... at a massive cumulative push... but today? Four species. FOUR! Blue Tit, Great Tit, Chaffinch and Nuthatch. No Greenfinch, No Goldfinch, No Siskin, No Redpoll, No Brambling, No House Sparrow, No Reed Bunting, No Long-tailed Tit, No Willow Tit, No Coal Tit... bugger all. I had to wait right until I was leaving to even get a single Great Spotted Woodpecker and that flew into a tree behind me and started calling along with a Jay and a couple of Bullfinch. I am shaking my head... Moore is NOT what it used to be :/

And with that, I dragged my sorry ass to Lapwing Lake where at least the 7 Wigeon were nice among the 2 Moorhen, 4 Teal, 3 Mallard, 2 Coot and 2 Moorhen...

Elsewhere, I added Buzzard, 31 Redwing, Long-tailed Tit, Song Thrush, Raven (flyover) and Carrion Crow, Wren, 

Total species tally for the day was... 34 - so not that far off the plucked 37 :)

SO what do I think? What, 8 years on... are my first impressions? 

#3words... Ponytail - Sasquatch - Tango 

They're as good as any to sum up how I feel...