It has been a cold end to the week so I made sure the bird feeders were filled up and the water was changed and bird baths cleaned to give the birds a chance of survival.

Yesterday I was a WWT Welney  doing the hare walk and then the afternoon swan talk and feed.

For the last three weeks the hare walks have been full sith people having to be turned away, so I had another 16 hardy souls willing to brave the snow showers as we headed out on to Lady fen “will we see any hares?” I was asked, Oh yes I said, I was then looking at 16 expressions that seemed to say ‘Oh yes’.

We headed out with the wind behind us and as we walked further out into the fen the shelter we had from the bank of the Bedford new cut so left us  I looked out over the field and sure enough I saw a ‘mound’ setting up my scope I soon focused it on the mound and with a relieved sound in my voice I said, “If you would all like to take a turn to look there is your first hare”, sure enough there was our first Brown hare hungered down against the wind and snow, ears back trying to keep as low as possible.

We soon had to retreat back to the centre as the wind a now sleet started to get really bad, I said we would give it 10 minutes and head out again, which we did, the rain, sleet and snow stopped but the wind was still strong and if anything dries us out from the previous outing, soon the group were rewarded with 7 hare sightings and we all headed back to the warmth of the centre, I was thanked and I headed over to main observatory for my guide in the hide stint before the swan talk and feed, I am always amazed by how far people travel to East Anglia for our wildlife, like the gentleman who had come down for the weekend from Glasgow fo birdwatching, he made the trip to Welney for the Bewick swans.

I did my talk and swan feed at 3:30 then said it there are any questions to come and see me I had a lot of than you’s and a few questions and then as I gentleman walked out he patted me on the shoulder and said ” You were inspiring “.

So now if any asks me why do you volunteer, the answer is above, for promoting our region, our wildlife and the rare time I get comments like the last one.

I shall be back next Saturday for my ‘stint’, my voice may go but my heart will be in as always.

The collective noun for Finches is a Charm, but for Goldfinches they can be called a Charm or a Tremble.

At this time of the year you will see goldfinches in small flocks and their flight is undulating as they search for dead thistle heads and teasel to feed on, in fact their song is a murmur and their flight is like a tremble, we associate goldfinches with teasel as they are the only finch that has a beak able to reach into the teasel to get the seeds.

Most of our Goldfinches will have moved to Southern Europe for the Winter but there are still quite a few about this time of the year around about 100,000 birds compares to over 300,000 breeding pairs in the Spring and Summer.

European goldfinches are brightly coloured birds with a bright red faces and yellow wing patches,  are about 12–13 cm long and will weigh 14 to 19 grams. many were kept in captivity for their song and colour, in fact one of my earliest memories as a child was seeing a goldfinch in a cage in Ireland outside a cottage, it did make me sad then and still does now.

But I am always happy to see them in my garden feeding on the nyger seed I hang out for them a charm more than a tremble I think.

So I took my Camera to work with me today as we have been seeing kingfishers every day, some quite dramatic and close sightings as they plunge in the water after sticklebacks.

But today we only got fleeting sights of one as it flew down the stream in front of us, maybe it was because it was cold and there was still some ice on the water.

But one bird you can always see near water is the Moorhen a member of the rail family, sometimes known as Marsh hens, River chickens and Waterhens which maybe is the most descriptive of these birds as really you do not find them on moors but always near water, males were known as Water cocks and females known as Water hens.

They always look a nervous bird flicking their tails as they walk, they have large feet that are not webbed, but help them walk over floating vegetation, in fact they also can be seen in trees which always looks quite odd as you do not expect to see them walking along branches.

Quite an attractive bird, with its yellow legs and yellow and red beak, but often overlooked as there are estimated to be 270,000 breeding pairs in the United Kingdom.

Last evening I went to see Francis Pryor the guy who discovered Flag Fen, author of non fiction books Britain BC series & The Making of the British Landscape, and now Time Team archaeologist. His latest book is fiction which is new venture into crime.

A really enjoyable evening and I must say I came away thinking more about our East Anglian Landscape, being East Anglian born and bred I am passionate about our landscape, OK it does not have mountains, has a few undulating hills, but we have the biggest skies and largest areas of wetland habitat than most of the British Isles, but one thing Francis said that I had not really thought about before is that we live in the most changed landscape in the British Isles (I may use this in my swan talks at Welney).

He said if you had stood here 100 years ago you would not have recognised the landscape around you, go back another 100 years and the same again, 4oo years ago and completely changed, I had not actually thought about this and of course he is correct, if I went back to Cumbria 100 years ago I would still see the fells that you can see there today and even 1000 years ago I bet I could still recognise them, but East Anglia? just look at the fens, 400 years ago it was largest wetlands in western Europe, but due to the draining of the fens in the mid 1600’s which continued until the 1800s the landscape was transformed to the large arable land we have today, which some reports say in places we only have about 60 years of peat left, so it is ongoing an ever changing landscape, will we be able to recognise this landscape in 100 years time, who knows, but it occurred to me to understand this landscape I need to understand the history, but in the meantime I will enjoy it as much as I can.

On our Lunchtime walk two colleagues and myself sometimes get a glance of a kingfisher along a small stream not far from our place of work, most people have never seen a kingfisher so you may consider us lucky, so you may even be envious when I tell you on Wednesday we saw three, add to that we saw one on a branch, we stood and watched it from only about 2 metres away, it was looking at us but did not move, we soon discovered why as it was watching a fish, it suddenly flew towards us and plunged into the water only about a half a metre from our feet, and this was the day I did not have my camera with me.

What is amazing about this is the stream is in the city of Cambridge by the botanical gardens but also near a busy road and footpath and there are a lot of people walking past oblivious of these small but brightly coloured birds.

Yesterday we did not see one, but I put this down to being windy and the water had a lot of ripples on maybe making it hard to see any fish. So today I took my camera to work and the wind had dropped and it was sunny.

I can see how some people miss them, if you are not looking for them and they sit quite still then unless they fly and you see that electric blue catch the sun, then you may miss it.

But some may be easier to see

The easiest way to identify the sex of the kingfisher is by the bill, the female has  red on the base of the bill ( think of a female wearing lipstick )

The male has bill that is all black.

All in all we were lucky again, so if you are walking along a stream or canal look carefully in the undergrowth by the water as you may miss this jewel of the bird world.