WINTER’S WILDLIFE
A shallow flash under blue skies evoked thoughts of an African watering hole shrinking in a drought. Of course, Bedfordshire’s market garden fields, famed for their brussels and brassicas, are not often compared to the arid scrublands and dried out riverbeds of Senegal and Sudan.
Yet days without rain had turned the flooded meadow into a welcoming feeding area for yellow wagtails and sand martins, newly arrived from sub-tropical wintering grounds south of the Sahara.
Two little ringed plovers, fresh from the Sahel region of Africa, also found the seasonal pool’s margins perfect for finding food as well as providing a potential breeding place. Not that LRPS, as they are known by birdwatchers, are master nest-makers.
With camouflaged, earthy-toned plumages to avoid marauding predators and eggs that can easily pass for stones, these delicate shorebirds need nothing more elaborate than a cursory scrape in the ground to call home. Sand pits and building sites have seen the plovers become firmly established in the UK since they first bred at Tring Reservoirs in Hertfordshire shortly before the breakout of the Second World War. A recent survey confirmed 588 breeding pairs in the UK.
I also spotted a pair of slumbering Egyptian geese, another species with origins in the grassy savannah.
Unlike the plovers, the Egyptian geese had not made epic journeys out of Africa but owed their presence to the rapidly increasing population of feral birds across East Anglia and South-east England. They now number more than 1,850 pairs.