The Last Flurries of Winter

ese past couple of days, still in Lancaster and without any pressing deadlines (how wonderful it feels to be free of pressing deadlines,) I was rather hopeful of getting some good wildlife spotting in. It’d been nearly a week since I last went birding, when incidentally I was able to add Bittern to my Lancashire list, one flying through the evening sunshine over the still brown reed beds at the RSPB’s stunning Leighton Moss.  I was enthusiastic to get out there and find some wildlife, see something I’d not seen before, perhaps.  On my way to drop off my essay, it did occur to me there may have been a fall of migrants, with what I am  I handed in my essay on Friday afternoon, and, no sooner had I done so, than the wind began to pick up, and Lancaster was, not for the first time that day, raked by horizontal, and some might say unseasonal snow.

Unseasonal. With Pheasant tracks.

I cursed climate change for its increasing tendencies toward extremes of weather, and spent the day indoors watching films instead. When I did manage to face up to the unseasonably big freeze, I got in the car and headed up, away from the sea this time, and into the Forest of Bowland, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which lies to the East of Lancaster. It took only a few minutes on delightfully names roads (Bay Horse Road! Procter Moss Lane!) to reach the car park in Abbeystead, a small town in Bowland. I wandered into the woods toward Abbeystead Lake. Bird life seemed a little scarce, the woods were quiet, and the footprints in the snow, enchanting to look at though they were almost exclusively those of grey squirrels and pheasants.  However the great tits with their two syllable song, were really going for it, the harbingers of early spring appeared unperturbed by the snow, which was thick on the ground in places. There were a few blue and coal tits about in the branches, but bird life seemed sparse.

Upland stream  in the Forest of Bowland

Upon reaching the lake, which was all pleasantly dramatic, lying in a steep-sided, wooded valley, with the snow white Bowland fells climbing up behind it, I startled up a few nervous mallards. Some teal, too, rested on the dark green water and a couple of Jackdaws passed overhead cawing. I continued round the lake, which was held by an impressive dam, and down into the woods. Robins and chaffinches occasionally flew across the path in front of me. As I walked back up toward the lake I became aware of a few Goosander, unfamiliar before my move up North but near ubiquitous round here it seems, floating about on the water surface, but I wondered where all the birds had gone. It occurred to me they may well have cleared out of these upland woods and headed somewhere at lower altitude, somewhere more sheltered, perhaps.  Walking across a bit of farmland on the way back to the car park revealed not just pheasants but also good numbers of Lapwing and Snipe in the fields, so the true upland waders at least were still on their spring habitat. Some of the lapwings were displaying, whooping and tumbling, using their broad wings to aerobatic advantage. Spring, it seemed, was in the air still somewhere, alongside the wind chill.  I drove home dodging pheasants and snowdrifts. One poor pheasant must have had the fright of his life, caught between a snowdrift, an oncoming vehicle and a Buzzard. Of course I waited until he had disappeared into the hedge beyond the snowdrift before I proceeded. 

Abbeystead Lake, Bowland, Lancs.

Today I headed down to a place near Scorton, on the river Wyre where it is still fast and narrow. I parked up at a picnic site with some bird feeders in it, which clearly hadn’t been filled for some time. A few blue and great tits hopped about in the trees above them, looking awkward and expectant. I walked past and onto the banks of the Wyre, where the tree canopy opened, The sky was blue, but a few flakes of snow fell from it inexplicably. A dipper shot up and down the river and paused on a rock for a moment, allowing me to take a (poor) photograph before returning to a cluster of branches by the waters edge. As it did so a second bird appeared and flew upstream. A pair of dippers, and a lovely new addition to my Lancashire list. These lovely birds are very scarce indeed down South, they are birds of the west and the midlands it seems, specialists of fast flowing streams, dipping under the water to hunt invertebrates and emerging still perfectly dry, smart and distinctive in their smart brown plumage and white breast.

Cinculus cinculus

   

Rounding the corner into the wood what struck me was the snowdrops. The wood was covered in them, and among them daffodils too were springing out of the ground. In stark contrast to the upland wood in Bowland, this wood down near the Wyre was a different matter. The snow had all cleared, as if it had never been there (of course, it might never have been there) and the snowdrops and daffodils still stood proud. March snowfall has been part of these plants evolution, of course. When the channel first separated Britain from the continent, about 12 thousand years ago,  isolating its impoverished fauna, anything which could not tolerate March snow would not have been able to survive. Colder winters abound through our history, the mini ice age of the 18^th century, the cold snap of the 1970s, and spring flowers have made it through. Here they formed a glorious white carpet splashed with yellow. Somewhere among the singing great tits I thought I heard a chiffchaff.  Cormorants flew overhead through a blue sky, and a buzzard was patrolling somewhere. Spring wasn’t cancelled, it had just had a minor setback, and it will be interesting to see what effect this late flurry of winter has had on wildlife phenology as the year progresses. 

Snowdrops near Scorton, Lancs.