Country: John Dempsey on Country Matters …
By John Dempsey
RIGHT, I have a confession to make, and I might as well get it off my chest straightaway – I have never really bothered counting mallards.
In the great scheme of things, it’s hardly a hanging offence, but over the years I’ve happily recorded hordes of wintering wigeon, busy teal, shoveler and pintail, but mallards have always slipped under my radar.
I can stoically compile a weekly tally of tufties on Sands Lake at Ainsdale throughout the year, but I suppose familiarity has bred contempt when it comes to our most well-known of wildfowl.
Until now, or rather last week, when those nice people at the British Trust for Ornithology sent me a report suggesting a sharp decline in the wintering population of mallards.
How could this be? I wondered, and scurried down to the Sands Lake, where a dusk sweep brought me no less than 186 of the blighters.
And now I can’t stop doing it, and neither it seems, can others.
Gary McLardy found 100- 120 at Greenloons Drive lake in Formby, while Derek Williams counted 300-350 on Haskayne Moss.
Warden of the Marshside RSPB reserve Graham Clarkson estimates 17 breeding pairs there, and several hundred are recorded on WeBs counts each month.
Jim Brady found 139 at Orrell Water Park.
So why are the BTO flustered?
Well the monitored number wintering in the UK has dropped by 33% since the mid 1980s, and duckling mortality has always been pretty high (I hate to break that to everyone who stuffs them with Mother’s Pride in the park, but there you go).
Milder winters may mean the birds aren’t congregating as much on larger waters, as smaller ponds and lakes remain ice-free, so they could go undetected.
Which goes some way to explaining my current “mallard mania” – I wonder if the winter population is just as big as it ever was, but is overlooked because the counts generally take in larger sites.
If our mallards are happily tootling round park lakes, ditches and farmland, rather than joining the throngs of wildfowl at established count sites, they may be going unrecorded.
That’s my theory anyway, and until the first wheatear and chiffchaff arrives, I’m sticking to it. And I’m keeping on counting.
A scarce bird these days, Barry McCarthy saw more than 30 Bewick’s swans opposite the Riverside Caravan Park on the A565 at Banks.
Nick and Cherry Bowmaker found a flock of 17 acrobatic siskins feeding in alders when they went for a walk round the fishing pond near Carr Lane, between Huyton and Prescot.
“It was a real treat to see the males in particular, with their bright yellow markings and black caps,” they explain.
Jim Brady found greater periwinkle and daffodils flowering at Worthington Lakes, and a 30yd stretch of chickweed in bloom near Rufford council depot.
A nearby hawthorn had fresh leaves on it, and another had buds too – the “bread and cheese” of country lore.
Jim came across flowering Danish scurvy grass on the East Lancs Road – it’s early for this enigmatic immigrant to be blooming.
Submit an item of news for the column by calling John Dempsey on 0151 472 2408 (Mon to Fri), or e-mail him at john.dempsey @liverpool.com
You can visit John’s blog online at http:// birdblog.merseyblogs.co.uk
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