Wild Lands And Wet Fowls

Saturday 29^th September took me to the rather stunning Wild lands and Wet fowls Trust reserve on the road to Liverpool at Martin Mere, in the company of some lovely and hung-over Mancunians. We braved the entrance fee, which always feels a little more than one might expect at WWT reserves, although I was sufficiently impressed by the reserve to claim it back off my membership,  and made our way initially to the captive waterfowl collection.  We allowed ourselves to be charmed by the two small and two very small Asian Short-Clawed otters while they were fed by the keeper,  a small compensation for the Eurasian Otter no-show at Leighton Moss a couple of days ago. These diminutive otters are incredibly cute, and seem to be the most popular species as zoo animal, perhaps on account of their social nature and relatively minimal space requirements. The keeper reminded us that the largest otter in the world is the Amazon river otter, which feeds on Piranhas in the South American river basin, and suggested keeping one close for safety. Most commentators seem to be of the view that the Amazon River Otter is a six-foot long predator every bit as powerful as a jaguar and more than happy to defend its territory against crocodiles. 

Asian Short Clawed Otter. Also capable of defending itself against crocodiles, through cooperation and strength in numbers.

Pair of handsome red-crested Pochards.

The otter feeding was charming and so were the lovely red-crested Pochards and Eider which occupied the next pool, sharing it with some wilder coots and moorhens. The captive wildfowl collections at the WWT centres, they have more in Barnes, have a clear conservation value and are no doubt an educational resource also. The WWT have also bred birds in captivity for release into the wild as part of invaluable reintroduction schemes, and maintain populations of birds which are threatened by habitat destruction. This doesn’t leave me unconcerned about the practice of pinioning wildfowl. The captive birds here (as opposed to the wild ones, separated by predator-proof fencing and largely in another part of the site) have had part of their wings removed to render them flightless. This practice is illegal in ducks kept on farms, but the WWT do it to prevent their wildfowl escaping. It does not sit easy that birds can be rendered permanently flightless, and how it impacts on their experience to be so damaged is unclear. I suppose pinioning is preferable to a repeat of the sorry tale of the Ruddy Duck, which was exterminated in recent years for expanding the gene pool available to an isolated population of the closely related White Headed Ducks in Spain, having initially escaped from, according to anecdotal evidence, another Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust exhibit in the 1980s.   The practice is carried out when the birds are chicks and supposedly do not suffer long term consequences aside from the intended, indeed, they appear to live normal lives, breeding well,  and the Trust has maintained these exhibits for the public for decades.


As we walked around the “Duck Zoo,” even while watching the Otter show, my eyes were being drawn skyward, and looking over the large Wetlands Centre, my anticipation for a look at the wild birds was growing. There were, occasionally, arrivals and departures, and sometimes just nervous flocks taking to the sky, of huge numbers of noisy, honking geese.  

To my surprise, there were still a few butterflies about, we saw Comma and Red Admirals feeding, and sunning themselves, on and around a buddleia beside the very quiet Beaver enclosure inside the captive waterfowl area. These beautiful nymphalids spend the winter as adults, often tucked up in the corners of outhouses and other cold buildings, and presumably in caves and hollow trees, to re-emerge when the weather becomes warmer, not reproducing until they emerge from this hibernation the following spring. These two were clearly feeding up before their long sleep.

Comma butterfly with autumnal hawthorne berries.

We made our way out of the “Duck Zoo” and onto the Martin Mere reserve “proper.” Martin Mere is a lake, situated in an unusually flat part of West Lancashire, which is fringed by wetland habitats, some reclaimed from farmland in more recent years, and some artificial scrapes used for the dual purposes of habitat creation and cleaning the water as it flows of farmland and into the Mere itself. Immediately outside the hide were the usual suspects, plus elegant pintails, somewhere out in the water a male almost in his full breeding plumage, with a chocolate brown head, while a pair, the male still in eclipse, dabbled closer to us.  The pintail is one of the most attractive of the wintering wild ducks, with the females and eclipse males having an unusual grace about them, elegant, more slightly built than some of their relatives, with longer necks and prominent tails.   A pair of teal flew low across the water and several more were around.

We walked up the muddy track toward the Harrier Hide, a wooden hide built in the shape of a bird of prey, or perhaps some Native American totem, which looks out over some marshland recently reclaimed from arable use.  A drake Shoveller sat contentedly on one of the grassy islands rising from the shallow water, as did a single Pink footed Goose and a smart Lesser Black Backed Gull.  There were relatively few birds to see despite the promising expanse of marshland we had in front of us. I’d hoped to catch sight of one of the promised Harriers or perhaps some other raptor hunting over the grass.  A shelduck grazed, while black headed gulls squabbled. It was at this hide that my camera battery gave out, finally, and I must thank Kel and Jack for the loan of their camera to take a couple of shots, including those which feature in this blog post.

Teal, Shelduck and Black Headed Gulls

We walked back along a muddy path to the visitors centre. Signs promised Tree Sparrows, the reserve being host to a colony, but we only saw a few blue and great tits on the feeding station, which was surprising given the diversity of birds around those at Leighton Moss.   I also elected to return to the visitors centre and become a member of the WWT, partly to gain free entry to some of the trusts’ other reserves, like Barnes in London, and Welney in Norfolk, and also to support their work preserving threatened wetland wildlife the world over. The WWT, alongside the RSPB and others is among the leading organisations working to establish a captive breeding population of Spoonbilled Sandpipers, an endangered species from Pacific Asia.

We walked around the corner past the gates to the car park and made our way to the final hide we’d visit that day and found it a spectacle. Pink footed Geese fly in from Iceland in October to spend the winter in the relative warmth of the British winter, and at Martin Mere, among other sites, they gather in their thousands. Estimates put the numbers there that day at around 12000. Skeins of the noisy, honking geese were returning from grazing on nearby farmers fields, where they are sometimes chased away when they threaten to eat the new shoots of Autumn-sown crops.   On the ground they were joined by a dozen or so Whooper Swans. From time to time, some of the Geese would take to the air, and others would return from feeding grounds further away. Greylag Geese also grazed outside the hide, although some of the islands had been reduced to mud by the action of so many feeding waterfowl.  Sometimes the teal would go up, perhaps responding to some terrestrial, or low flying predator outside of our view, and at times thousands of birds filled the evening sky, teal, pintail and goose.   But it was the V formations of Pink Footed Geese which provided the greatest spectacle. These migrants from the arctic, returning to their winter roost by the hundred.  These spectacular flocks seem to be the main features of reserves managed by the WWT.  They certainly maintain some special places.

Pink Footed Geese. Many.

Carelessly I also managed to leave my binoculars in one of the hides-fortunately, the typical honesty one associates from such places had prevailed and they had been returned to the visitors centre, giving me an excuse to make a repeat visit the following day.  On my return visit I managed to get a bit closer to the beautiful Whooper swans, taking in a hide to distant from the centre for us to reach on the first visit. Sadly I was without camera, but I must return when more of these birds are present. I also saw a Marsh Harrier and a couple of Widgeon,  the grazing duck which frequents wet meadows through the winter. A warden explained how local arable farmers bring some if their rejected potatoes to the reserve to feed the birds, distracting them from feeding on potentially more valuable crops.  

The work of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust is excellent and worthwhile, and, though I can take or leave their “duck zoos” of artificially flightless birds, they maintain some of the most stunning wetland habitats around on their reserves, and their conservation work is impeccable, so I was pleased to add another window sticker to the small collection in my car.