Les Miserables

I must confess that John Ruskin is testing my patience a little now! He’s right though, there is really no such thing as bad weather, it’s the same weather day after day that is the real problem – it becomes tedious, rain or shine.

The scene on Burton marsh this morning was rather sodden with the resident Kestrels looking like gloom personified - praying I’m sure for some better hunting conditions. The owls must be enduring tough times too - it can be no fun having saturated feathers.

On the other hand, some of the wading birds – Curlew and Snipe for example – must be thriving in the damp conditions; the muddy earth being perfect for their long and probing bills.

The rainfall has also topped up all the flashes on the marsh which looks like being a boon for the over-wintering wildfowl – at the end of September most were bone dry. Egrets too must be relishing the prospect of investigating all the new pools.

With Becks and I drenched to the skin and feeling rather fed-up it was difficult to focus on the birds today, both in terms of concentration and in a littoral sense too – I could not keep my lens’ clear for more than twenty seconds.

Nevertheless, I did manage to find what I am fairly certain was a female Merlin, but given the condition of my optical equipment it could have equally been part of a fence post or a speck of dirt!

Maybe this is just as well, as I can refocus my attention on reading the new North-East Wales Bird Report for 2008. It has a picture of a GS Woodpecker on the front and you can pick-up a copy at Inner Marsh Farm for the modest sum of a fiver.

The publication is the work of the hitherto unknown to me Clwyd Bird Recording Group and covers the counties of Flintshire and Denbighshire. No fewer than four hundred people have submitted sightings to the report, with some chap called Anon Birdguides the most prolific contributor of all – he must get out more than me!

Seriously though, it must have taken a Herculean effort to collect and collate all the available data. Bird recording seems to be an extremely disparate activity nowadays with some sightings made available electronically in a matter of seconds whilst others are received some time later via more traditional methods such as paper submissions.

Many must go unrecorded too; for example, surely more than four Cuckoo’s must have been heard or sighted in Flintshire during 2008? I personally have heard two this year at Cilcain and Coed Talon – both of which were submitted to the BTO. I guess that the ideal situation would be for everybody to send their records to one central resource that all interested parties could access, but we are a long way from that!

Until later.