Mike's Natural Musings: Lake District, March 2023, Day 4

Friday 31 March 2023

Lake District, March 2023, Day 4

There is was: covered in green algae and gelatinous, our first frog spawn of the year in the flooded path side as we came out of Lower Hide. We had arrived at Leighton moss shortly after 11.00 and headed straight for the feeding station where I was pleased to quickly see my fist 'new for year' tick a marsh tit. Next it was down to Lillian's Hide where we sheltered from the rain for half an hour before moving on to Causeway Hide. Sounds of bird song were all around: chichaffs providing a sense of spring, cetti's warblers with their incredibly loud stacatto notes seemingly from the depths of vegetation right next to you and up to for booming bitterns. We took the opportunity to have our regular lunch of christmas cake and cheese in Causeway Hide and picked up snipe, lapwing and pochard. The most distant hide is Lower and we were ready for a sit down when we got there. There were large numbers of teal and shoveler here and I enjoyed watching the male shoverlers feeding, their heads submerged and spinning round like whilrlind devishes. Taking photographs was a real callenge as they only lifted their heads out of the water for the briefest moment. Every so often, though, the males would stray into each other's territory and the incumbent would lift it's head high out the water to show its displeasure.

Frogspawn duly inspected we wandered back to Causway where there was an impressive display of sand martins and swalls. it was time for tea and cake in the cafe but on the way I went to look for and had pointed out a water pipit that I had been told about. Excellent.

Duly refreshed we finished our trip with a visit to the saltmarsh hides where, although picking up a few more species the water levels were too high to attract many birds. As it often does, though the path to the Eric Morecambe hide had large scarlet elf cup fungi, always a pleasure to see. Plants are appearing at a great reate of knots now as spring progesses: wood anemone with their beautiful pink sepals, green dog's mercury, promroses, cowslips, wild garlic and coltsfoot.

We completed our day with a visit to Arnside and the excellent Albion pub, looking out over the estuary. It was, of course, beer o'clock.