Such a Frost

The thick mist/fog forecast for overnight didn't appear but a severe frost did and everything was covered in white when I went out to the paper shop at 6.00am. Later, as the sun began to rise in the dawn sky, I arrived at a white reserve in a temperature of -3 degrees.

Everything was covered in a white frost and it looked pretty bleak and foreboding.

 The reserve's cattle just carried on carrying on though, despite the fact that the grass that they were eating was frozen.

At first it was like walking round inside a freezer unit but gradually, as the sun began to radiate a semblance of heat, the frost began to lift and things became more comfortable.

A couple of small parties of Greylag Geese flew into the reserve from their overnight roost on the neighbouring farmland.

 Ice on the surface of the sea wall fleet, the only decent amount of water on most of the reserve.

So anyway, that is how it looked at first light this morning, a reserve frozen in time, pretty much how my frame of mind is at this time of year. Just holding my breath and waiting for the Spring to spur things into new life, just going through the motions. Yesterday, over lunchtime, the regular three of us carried out the monthly Wetland Bird Survey at our designated sections. Mine, the main marsh part of the reserve, came up with a reasonable variety of wildfowl and waders but as usual, thanks to the lack of water, nothing substantial numbers wise. Totals yesterday, among others, of  80 Greylag Geese, 70 Mallard and 110 Shelduck, look pretty pathetic when as recently as 5-7 years ago, when the Flood field was indeed flooded, we were counting wildfowl in the thousands.

I returned later in the afternoon yesterday to then take part in the monthly Harrier Roost Count. It was an amazing sunset in the still, December afternoon but then turned pretty cold as I paced up and down the sea wall waiting for the dusk to increase and my target species the Hen Harrier to suddenly appear  and drop into roost. Eventually, if any did do that, I missed them in the gloom and registered a nought, although up to four have been seen coming out of the roost at dawn in recent days, so Hen Harrier numbers looking better. At the same time, elsewhere on Sheppey, the regular Marsh Harrier roosts were being counted and came up with the amazing total of 103 birds going in to roost, Sheppey really is a national Marsh Harrier stronghold these days.