Winter is Slipping By

It was still three parts dark as I made my way along the Harty Road yesterday (Sunday) morning to the reserve. However, by the time that I had made my way across the reserve to the sea wall the sky had lightened considerably, although it was heavily grey rather than blue, but it was very mild. It was the second to last day of the wildfowling season and I had arrived early to see if many wildfowlers were taking the opportunity to bag a duck or two on this last weekend of the season. There was just the one, who throughout the hour and a half I was there never fired a shot, which pretty much summed up their season adjacent to the reserve.
Progressing much further along the sea wall to where I could see another birdwatcher, who I knew would be looking at Hen Harriers leaving their overnight roost, sun-rise began to happen. The mainly grey sky had broken into several slits and in one of those brief slits a great red sun briefly appeared, like a blood shot eye in a grey face, until it blinked and was gone again. I chatted with the other birdwatcher, who had as expected seen Hen Harriers leave their roost, three ringtails, and then departed back along the sea wall for home, I was due back that evening for the monthly harrier roost count.
The day had been almost warm, with good sunny spells, as I made my back along the Harty road again at 16.45. There were numerous bird watchers along the road side as I drove past, the legacy no doubt of last week's BBC television's Countryfile feature about what a superb place to view birds of prey, Harty was. Just a shame that so many choose, out of laziness I suppose, to use the small, vehicle passing places as car parks rather than the car park supplied at the Raptor Viewing Mound.
It was a pleasantly mild and windless late afternoon as I climbed the sea wall again and the light was just starting to fade. Several hundred yards away three wildfowlers were no doubt swapping tales of how the season had been for them and so I walked along and briefly joined them for a chat. It was clear that with just one day to go, that the shooting season in front of the reserve had been pretty dire and in no way matching the above average bags seen elsewhere around Kent. It was also clear, just standing there looking across the reserve as we spoke, of the reason why, we could of been looking at the reserve in mid-summer, no flooded areas and no deep ditches. The reserve's wildfowl counts this winter have been some of the lowest for years, if not ever, and it was quite apparent to us all that by the time the wildfowlers returned next September that the reserve could resemble a desert unless it's an exceptionally wet summer.
As the dusk began to rapidly settle across the marsh the wildfowlers and their dogs left me and walked out to their chosen spots on the saltings, in the hope that an odd duck or goose might fly over them, while I remained on the sea wall. I began to earnestly watch the normal harrier roost site through my telescope pausing briefly for seconds at a time to take in the other bird world out on The Swale. The tide was rising and several hundred waders were noisily being pushed off of the mudflats where they fed, still desperate for that last morsel before they went to roost. In the increasing gloom and way across on the mainland side, several hundred Brent Geese rose up, almost disappearing into the darkness and came across to the Sheppey side before settling down on the tide and letting it flow them along with it. For a moment birds were calling from everywhere, Coots and the odd Water Rail along the sea wall fleet, pheasants and a few Mallard out in the marsh and suddenly, I had a Short-eared Owl hunting in circles round me. Ellie, who was off hunting for voles herself in the sea wall grass, suddenly had company, for a while the owl followed her, hoping that she would flush out a vole that it could catch.
And then, it was suddenly almost dark, I had seen the three Hen Harriers go back into the same roost that they had left early in the day, it was time to leave. I waived to the barely visible wildfowlers tucked down in the gullies and threaded my way back across the marsh in the darkness, Ellie a constant white flash, ahead of me and nose to the ground, still hoping to pick up the scent of something worthy of chasing. It'd had been a good day.