Cold Comfort Farm

With it raining cats and dogs and the wind howling, there was only one sensible option today: stay indoors. Inner Marsh Farm it is then.

The east facing hide, sheltered behind by a railway embankment can be quite cosy in bad weather, especially when you are sporting more layers than a geology exam paper.

The birds seemed similarly unimpressed by the cold, with the majority of the wildfowl hunkered down behind the causeway between the two pools.

Then things began to pick-up considerably. A male Peregrine circled the back scrape eyeing-up the Teal, but soon disappeared over Puddington.

A few minutes later an adult female Marsh Harrier appeared and this was quickly followed by a juvenile male Hen Harrier in quartering the wet meadow. Eventually the Marsh Harrier drifted over towards the hide giving absolutely cracking views, whilst the Hen Harrier largely stayed afar trying to shake off the attention of a mobbing corvid.

Quite an interesting bird the female Marsh Harrier – there is a fairly extensive amount of white on the leading edges and it actually looks very small for an adult female. Probably goes to show just how variable raptors can be.

There was just enough time for another Peregrine visitation – this time a whacking great female. After carefully approaching the roosting ducks in a low and purposeful flight I was anticipating a successful hunt, but when the wildfowl – mostly Pintail – clocked the falcon they barely moved. This seemed to confuse the raptor and it failed to make an attempt at a kill and flew off over the marsh. Cool customers these Pintail.

A very loud chap from Wales then announced confidently that he had found two Long-billed Dowitchers on the border pool. They very quickly turned into Greenshank, but the observer was extremely reluctant to accept this fact as there was “No Greenshank in the log”. No argument there then.

Not that you can really decipher the contents of the log - someone clearly left the hide shutters open yesterday as the hide log book is saturated. I wonder if this makes it waterlogged. Sorry.

Until later.