Visit to WWT Welney 22nd March 2013

Visit to WWT Welney 22nd March 2013

As a reward for enduring the renovation work on our house we took a few days off to do a bit of birding and a bit of visiting friends. Our initial plan was to do a two day birding tour of the Brecks but we stopped en route to see if we could get to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site at Welney. Our attempt to get there was greatly confused by the signage for the site which is fairly clear if you come from the Wisbech direction but not if you come from the Littleport direction as we did !  One thing in common with both our visits was the road closed signs we met with. We had come from the Wisbech side last year and had encountered the warning signs saying that the road was closed due to flooding so had not gone further. This year we came from the Littleport direction but missed the sign so went on past the village of Welney and came across the road  closed signs again ! This time we ignored the signs because we could see cars coming from the opposite direction. This only meant that we went a long way out of our way and had to double back on ourselves coming back through Christchurch and back to Welney. From this direction the signage was much clearer and we eventually made it to the visitor centre. In point of fact the road closed signs mean very little because they do not have the manpower to keep changing the signs from open to closed so they largely say that the road is closed whenever there is inclement weather ! When we tried to visit last year there had been record amounts of rain resulting in the closure of the access roads to the site and, additionally,  most of the site was under water anyway. We had hoped for better luck this time but, as it happened, our break coincided with a spell of arctic weather with heavy snowfalls in many parts of the country and plummeting temperatures – the coldest March for fifty years !

At the visitor centre we were informed that the only hides we could visit were the one at the visitor centre itself and the main observatory. From the comfort of the cafe in the visitor centre we could see a couple of Culew and some Wigeon but, apart from Coots and Moorhen, that was about it. Over at the main observatory things were only slightly better. After braving the freezing gales to get over the canal that runs through the site we found that there was only one other person at the site that wasn’t employed there, although another person joined after about an hour.

The main problem here was that the site is largely made up of Ouse washes and so when the river is flooded the water pours in to the site and what is sometimes square patches of marshy land divided by straight canals allowing for waders and dabbling ducks etc. as well as diving ducks becomes one big and deep lake so only those birds that can deal with deep water were still around to see. Tufted Ducks, Pochard and Goldeneye were in  evidence and there were Whooper and Mute Swans. Where there were bits of land there were Reed Buntings and Lapwing. There was a small flock of Avocet and some Great Crested Grebes and Cormorants but really it was a bit disappointing.

We did stay for a couple of hours but it was so bitterly cold that we headed off to our hotel to get ready for some arctic birding int he Thetford Forest.

Bird Sightings : WWT Welney

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