Nov 21st Strumpshaw Fen

Sunshine over the Pump House

It is starting to feel more like winter this week. It is much more chillier than it has been for much of November this year. Out on the reserve, there was a dead silence and there wasn't an awful lot to see from Fen Hide, except for a couple of Chinese water deer. Moving on to the river and the sense of emptiness continued, that is with the exception of one mute swan that swam up to the jetty I was standing on to meet me for a moment. Thankfully, the silence was broken on my way back through the woods. Birds seemed to surround me from every direction but were moving too fast for me to keep up with my cumbersome camera. There were wrens, robins, great, blue, coal, marsh and long-tailed tits, blackbirds, goldcrests and I noticed that the treecreepers were singing their trilling song for the first time since the spring.

Chinese Water Deer

Mute Swan

Bur-thistle

Robin

Marsh Tit

Marsh Harrier

Reception Hide was proving to be the best place to see wildlife on the reserve this morning. The broad was, as is normally the case at this time of the year, full of the usual cast of mallard, shoveler, gadwall, teal, coot and moorhen with the odd mute swan being chased by Cobber the black swan and a cormorant sitting on its favourite post to dry its wings. The marsh harriers are getting more frequent and were causing mayhem by testing the wildfowl's awareness of its presence by playfully chasing them around the broad. Two male and one female pheasant also paid a lengthy visit at the reed stubble in front of the hide.

Shoveler

Teal and Shoveler

Teal

Gadwall

Pheasant

Greylags

Buzzard

Otter

It was a very familiar scene to what I've been seeing week in week out. A broad full of ducks. However, if you learn to read the signs that they and the way the water ripples and moves, sometimes something better turns up. I was scanning the broad when I noticed the water at the far left channel was forming in an unnatural way. A wake, a trail of water was forming and it was leading right, along the far edge of the broad. It lead to an otter, which was continued to follow the reed bed and even hauled itself up onto the land momentarily before I eventually lost it behind the reedy islands. Several minutes later, thinking that it gave me the slip, the ducks close to the hide were suddenly on high alert. Then I noticed the otter's head popping out of the water behind the measuring post! It submerged before I could even take its photo and it was a further few minutes until I found it once more, this time swimming towards the far right channel where it was never seen again.