RSPB Sightings

As I said yesterday, there wasn't really a great deal of wildlife to see at RSPB Fairburn Ings, certainly not without a telescope, even though I enjoyed the walk and the general views. There was some neon yellow lichen on some of the little shrubs. They do say lichen is a sign of healthy air and, if so, that does indicate quite graphically how far this former industrial area has come in the last 50 years or so. 

Lichens are a lot more interesting than they look. They are actually two organisms living together - a fungus and an alga existing in symbiosis. This yellow one seems to be a form of Xanthoria. That's as much as I know. I once had a learned friend who was a lichen expert and even had a few named after him. (He went on to become a vicar, which was a sad loss for the lichen world and a great gain for the CofE!)  

As for birds, there were numbers of ducks - tufted, pochard, shelduck and probably others; moorhens and coots; cormorants; mute swans; geese; lapwings; some waders (too far away to identify); black-headed and herring gulls; magpies; crows; and a red kite. I also saw a little egret and a little grebe, on the dyke beyond the 'kingfisher screen'... though no kingfisher apparent. On my way out the little egret was hiding, but was a little more visible on my way back. 

RSPB Fairburn Ings

With all the kerfuffle of moving house last year, I didn't get out and about as much as I might have done. In the winter, too, I always seem to slow down and feel like I want to hibernate! I am, however, determined to motivate myself to have a few more outings this year. Between Christmas and New Year, I decided to take advantage of the one day that promised a bit of sunshine - no fog, no rain, little wind. I took myself off to the RSPB nature reserve at Fairburn Ings, midway between Leeds and Wakefield. 

It's many years since I last went and it has been expanded, so that it's now a sprawling and rather scrappy place of wetlands, bogs, reedbeds and scrubby woodland. It was, about 60 years ago, a mining and industrial area. Subsidence of old mine workings, combined with flooding from the adjacent River Aire (pictured below), formed several lakes and the associated spoil heaps are now being reclaimed as grassland and woods.  

The promised sunshine, didn't develop (at least, not until I was having a coffee in the visitor centre at the end of my walk!) It was brighter than it has been though, and there was some blue sky, but the sun itself stayed hidden behind a stubborn bank of cloud. 

As for birds, there really wasn't much about, at least not that I could see with my ancient binoculars. What there was - ducks, cormorants, gulls - sat on islands and mudbanks in the lakes, and I would have needed a telescope to identify them properly. That's one reason why I prefer smaller reserves like Rodley, where there are more hides and you can get much nearer to the wildlife. 

I did, however, enjoy a good walk, followed by coffee and a highly calorific flapjack (which undoubtedly negated the exercise!)  In the visitor centre they had an array of secondhand books too, so I scored, in very good condition, a book titled 'The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs' by Tristan Gooley - a bargain at £1. That should educate me to enjoy my walks even more. 

Nature at St Aidans

St Aidans Nature Reserve is a huge area of wetland and reedbed, fringed by woodland. It's so vast that wildlife tends not to congregate in just one spot, and you really need a birdwatching telescope properly to see what's there. I had my binoculars and managed to identify a few ducks, geese, cormorants and waders as I wandered the labyrinthine paths. There was reputed to be a great white egret but I couldn't find that, and a couple of herons in trees turned out to be decoys placed there to encourage real herons to nest! Ha! 

My best 'spot' was the little bird below. The image is a heavy crop (my lens, at 135mm max, isn't suitable for serious bird photography) but this is a black-necked grebe (Podiceps nigricollis). I knew these rare little diving waterbirds now breed at St Aidans but I didn't expect to see one at this time of year. They are quite a sight in their summer plumage, with dramatic golden feathers around their red eyes; in winter they are more monochrome. (See HERE) They are pretty uncommon in the UK, believed to be less than 50 breeding pairs and only about 130 birds overwintering in the whole of the UK, so to see this one was pretty special. (And I did double-check the ID with both the reserve sightings list, the local birdwatching group website and a couple of birders at the lakeside!)

I also spotted some great crested grebes, much more common but still a lovely sight. 

There are few flowers or bursts of colour at this time of year so it was nice to see white dead-nettle (Lamium album)

and some common gorse (Ulex europaeus) in bloom. Their bright yellow flowers are so cheerful. 

Talking of bright yellow, I didn't expect to find a mini minibus there either! I hope there isn't a heartbroken small child somewhere...
 

Mud, mud, glorious mud

We've had some very wet weather of late so I've been trying to think of walks that might not be too muddy... I had the idea of going to St Aidans nature reserve, south of Leeds. I knew there were cinder tracks and paths; however, it turned out there was still plenty of mud and in some parts each step taken made that peculiar squelchy, sucking sound of mud releasing the boot! Such a cleaning job needed when I got home but at least I've now proved my boots are waterproof! I'd have been better in wellies but I don't like walking far in them. 

The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) now care for the relatively new (2017) St Aidans Nature Park. It was formerly an open-cast coal mining area that suffered catastrophic flooding when the adjacent riverbank collapsed in 1988. Remedial work was done over several years and more mining took place until the site closed in 2002 and a wetland reserve was created. 

There is still a huge 'walking dragline' excavator on site, affectionately known as 'Oddball', preserved in memory of the 'sunshine' miners that worked on the opencast site. It towers over the little log cabin visitor centre. From the hillside above the site, you get some idea of how extensive (990 acres) the area is. The low sun, which peeked through the clouds as the day progressed, glinted off the many lakes and watercourses. 

I'll post a few more pictures of the reserve tomorrow.