With freezing north-easterlies and regular snow flurries over the past few days have felt like some of the coldest this winter, with spring weather still seemingly weeks away, the focus remained on birds. The last few days have certainly produced a good diversity of wildfowl with mute swan, white-fronted goose, pink-footed goose, greylag goose, canada goose, barnacle goose, brent goose, shelduck, mallard, gadwall, pintail, shoveler, wigeon, teal, pochard, red-crested pochard, tufted duck, eider, common scoter, goldeneye, smew, goosander and mandarin making up a cool 23 species dotted around the region.
Male Mandarins have elaborate mid-tertial feathers, which look like sails.
The earliest mention of this species in England, which at the time
was widely known as The galericulata or Chinese teal, was shortly before 1745,
at Richmond Green, Surrey. This was a small introduction in the gardens of Sir
Mathew Decker the director of the East India Company, who imported numerous Asian
species of flora and fauna to Britain. The first breeding record was in 1834 in
the grounds of the Zoological Society of London. The species subsequently
become popular within collections and eventually spread away from these to form
free flying feral colonies.
Female roe deer, the anal "tush" (the white tuft on the rear) is a distinctive feature of females.
Temporary associations of roe deer are common in arable landscapes during the winter.
It was also good to have a look at the seabird colonies this week
which are starting to build up again prior to the breeding season, with gannets
and fulmar back on the cliffs. Sporadic guillemot invasions are also becoming
more frequent. A couple of checks of some of the local badger setts has
revealed activity levels increasing which is quite typical, with territorial
behaviour quite high around March, as animals tend to mate between February and
May. Cubs are predominantly born around February. This species shows delayed
implantation of the egg, hence why mating occurs after births and subsequent
births occur so late after mating. Another species which shows delayed implantation
is the roe deer, a species which is highly visible at this time of year, when
vegetation cover is low.
Fulmar are abundant along the cliffs as they get ready for another long breeding season.
Moorhen, a regularly observed species around the wetland of the region
A distant shot of a "redhead" smew a nice addition to the year list.
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