Wigeon - tastic

Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Today I helped with the Tuesday team of Farlington volunteers to cut vegetation at The Deeps. Mostly grass, to be precise. The long, now parched, grass and flowering stems are always in need of an annual cut at the Deeps to make the grassy areas more attractive and suitable for Wigeon to graze. Wigeon prefer short grass on which to graze. At the Deeps we expanded work done last week (and last month) and ended up with a nice large area which, given some rain, will have a flush of nice short green grass by the end of the autumn. A few other areas, and some stray bramble clumps, were also whittled away. It's important to keep any bramble growth on the main fields in check as they would soon begin to fragment the open character of the marsh while at the same time site lines for the birds would be lost. The twelve volunteers who turned up, including myself, got quite a bit done. I am very sure that, eventually this autumn and winter, the birds will be making use of the areas we have prepared for them.

Web link: Volunteering on Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust Reserves

One species in particular caught our eye while having lunch - Clouded Yellow butterflies. There were a couple of them feeding on the Hawkbit flowers (see previous post) but they were very active and rarely staying still for long. They are certainly profiting from the very dry and warm conditions at the moment. Other species may not be. Unfortunately both the Deeps and the Scrape are close to drying up of water completely. Even the ditch feeding the Deeps is almost dry. This is not so good news for some of the invertebrate species that live in them and even some of the vertebrates will be having a hard time. Six Little Egrets were gorging themselves on the easy (concentrated) pickings in the last of the patches of water this morning.

The drought has concentrated all the reserves' wildfowl on the lake and stream. This evening I counted 357 Teal, 36 Shoveler and 38 Gadwall here. There were also some Mallards, Pintail and Wigeon. The latter are now visiting these areas in large numbers during the early morning to drink and bathe. Today I counted 350 before they flew off into the main harbour where they are currently feeding on marine algae and grasses. Pintails are always a feature of the lake (and adjacent harbour mudflats) in the autumn. I have counted up to 45 recently. A couple of "stock" images are below (they were taken by me, only last year!) - Wigeon on left, Pintail on right.
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