Top actors put on boardwalk show
I LOVE wandering along boardwalks through reed beds on our nature reserves, particularly first thing in the morning.
These wonderful habitats are noisy and lively, particularly in spring.
They are full of reed buntings and reed warblers.
Reed buntings are a favourite bird of mine, with their proud black heads finished off with a drooping white moustache – if they are male.
The male body is a streaky brown and females are completely streaky brown.
These birds have always been common in wetlands but numbers have dropped and they are now visiting farmland and gardens in the hunt for food.
Sparrow-sized, they feed on seeds and invertebrates.
In the winter, these lovely birds join mixed flocks of buntings, finches and sparrows to feed on seeds on farmland.
In the breeding season, males can be spotted perched high on reeds, rushes or scrub, voicing their simple, three-note territorial call.
I recall a wonderful encounter where a reed bunting was feeding on top of a teasel in a field on our Cutacre Nature Reserve in Tyldesley.
It looked so proud and happy.
Females breed low in the dense vegetation, constructing nests from grass, reeds and moss.
Reed buntings are great actors and if a bird of prey or magpie comes along, looking for the inhabitants of the nest, one of the adults will draw it away by pretending to be injured.
Oscar nomination please.
These are fantastic birds on your bird table, mixing with sparrows and tits. Look out for that moustache to spot the difference and then add it to your spotter list.
The reason they are in your garden is due to the draining of agricultural areas and the removal of reed beds.
I do remember as a kid that many of the ponds in Salford had small reed beds and bullrushes were all over the place.
What brilliant places they were for exploration.
Every pond, no matter how small, had a storyteller who would warn us that they were ‘really, really’ deep right in the middle.
It probably stopped us paddling in a lot of dangerous places.
I don’t recall there being shopping trolleys or much litter in those ponds and they were full of wild beasties.
Housing developments tend to leave ponds that look neat and tidy and not much use for some of our specialised wildlife.
Your local Wildlife Trust is committed to creating ponds across the North West involving a number of projects – the previously mentioned Cutacre had loads of ponds and lots amphibians.
So keep an eye out for our lovely reed buntings.
Spotting those moustaches is always a treat.