so go on, go out and do so!
JANUARY
January may seem cold, dark and unpromising: but, in fact, it is an excellent month to get out into the countryside and witness some of our greatest wildlife spectacles, including hordes of wintering birds, as well as a few surprises.
The first month of the year triggers all sorts of activity in the countryside, and even more so in our towns and cities, where temperatures tend to be a degree or two warmer than their surroundings. This creates a welcome oasis for many wild creatures to take refuge during the cold winter months. Spring and the breeding season may seem a long way away, but birds such as the wren, dunnock and mistle thrush are already starting to sing; while in the very mildest parts of the country, such as the coastal valleys of the southwest, wild flowers are even beginning to appear.
But for most creatures January is all about survival. So they join together in groups to find food and avoid predators, and try to make it through the lean winter months so that they can breed in the spring. The urge to find food during the short daylight hours means that many creatures are active all day long, a real advantage as they may be easier to approach than at any other time of year.
So wrap up warm, head outside and enjoy the best of winter wildlife watching.
Where to go Wildlife and Wetlands Trust centres
When Peter (later Sir Peter) Scott founded the Wildfowl Trust on the Severn Estuary just after the Second World War, he could not have realised what he was starting off. In the fifty years or so since, his enthusiasm for wildfowl – that is, ducks, geese and swans – has grown into an international conservation organisation. Today the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) works to safeguard wetland areas for birds and other wildlife, not just in Britain, but all over the world.
Bill's top tip
_ If you really want to get the best views of the floodlit feeding, make sure you turn up at least an hour beforehand: the hides can get very crowded and people at the back don’t always get a good view.
Nothing matches the spectacle of really wild ducks, geese and swans. The winter months are the best time to experience this: there are large numbers of wildfowl in their natural habitat, providing great close-up views, often from the comfort of a heated hide. It’s a great way for adults and children to learn how to identify birds – ducks (well, drakes – it is they who sport the colourful plumage) are an easy group to start with – and also to observe aspects of their behaviour, such as feeding, flocking and roosting. The late afternoon roosts are the most spectacular, and the WWT puts on regular floodlit feeding sessions at several of its centres.
The nine WWT sites are strategically placed around the country to attract the greatest range of visiting wildfowl and other birds. They breed in Arctic Europe and Siberia and come here for the winter primarily because our mild winter climate enables them to find food easily, but also because we have long protected them against unregulated shooting.
The best place to start is Slimbridge, on the Severn Estuary between Bristol and Gloucester, near the M5 motorway. Stroll through the world’s most diverse collection of captive wildfowl, take photographs, or simply admire their plumage and behaviour. The hides look out over the marshes and give reliable (if sometimes distant) views of many wildfowl species, notably Bewick’s swans and white-fronted geese. The swans have flown from Siberia tundra, and with practice can be individually identified by their yellow and black bill pattern. There are also large flocks of Bewick’s and whooper swans at Welney on the Ouse Washes, where the birds are fed at dusk and can be watched under floodlights.
Martin Mere, in Lancashire, and Caerlaverock, on the Scottish side of the Solway Firth, are both home to large numbers of wild geese; arguably as impressive as the swans, and often much more numerous. Three other centres, Arundel in West Sussex, Castle Espie in Northern Ireland, and Washington in County Durham, provide excellent close-up views of a variety of breeding and wintering birds, and are well worth a visit if you are in the area. In Wales, the National Wetlands Centre near Llanelli is pioneering new ways of working with wetland wildlife, and is home to a growing population of little egrets.
Finally, the most unusual WWT venue of all is the London Wetland Centre. Situated on a site alongside the Thames at Barnes and built from scratch on the site of some disused reservoirs, it more than makes up in variety and interest what it lacks in size. The star attraction is the wintering bitterns, which have turned up regularly in the past couple of winters, though they can be very elusive. Still, if you get fed up with waiting, you can always take refuge in the excellent café!
Stuff to take
Binoculars – essential if you want to observe the wild birds as well as the captive collection. A telescope may also be useful at sites such as Caerlaverock, Welney and Slimbridge
Camera and film if you want to practise bird photography on easy subjects – especially the captive birds in the collections
A field guide
Timing
You will see wildfowl at any time of day, but to observe feeding and roosting it’s best to arrive in early to mid-afternoon, and stay until just after dusk. Most WWT centres are open daily throughout the year: for details telephone 01453 890333 or check out their website (www.wwt.org.uk).
Wild goose chases
As do all people of a ‘certain age’, I delight in recounting how, when I were a lad, I suffered for my pleasures. Not least in pursuit of wild geese. As soon as I had passed my driving test, my Dad allowed me to take his car to go birdwatching. His nervousness about my dodgy driving was presumably preferable to the chore of chauffeuring me to various bleak reservoirs around Birmingham.
Slimbridge then was not as it is today. Go to the headquarters of the WWT now and you will be delighted by one of the most lavish and ‘modern’ wildlife centres, reserves, establishments – it’s all those things and more – in the world. Back in the late 1950s, it was all a bit more basic. There were a few ‘captive’ birds in pens, principally for scientific study and reintroduction schemes. Nowadays, it is an incredibly complete ‘collection’, and the science is world renowned.
One aspect hasn’t changed, though: now, as then, several thousand wild geese – mainly white-fronts from Siberia – winter along the Severn. In fact, there were even more when I was a teenager. They invariably fed way out on the ‘Dumbles’, the water meadows alongside the river. The wild geese were what I wanted to see. More specifically, I was close to being consumed by an ambition to ‘tick off’ a lesser white-fronted goose, a very rare bird but one that had inspired Peter Scott to found the Wildfowl Trust when he spotted a ‘lesser’ at Slimbridge back in the 1940s.
Frankly, my chances of emulating Peter Scott weren’t good. Not just because lesser white-fronts were so rare, or because it would have been very difficult to pick one out among the thousands of common white-fronts, but mainly because in those days it was almost impossible to get a decent view of the geese! There were only one or two rather rickety wooden hides, and even from them the geese were miles away. If it was
