Cold, wet and blustery in Rochdale; drier and milder but still blustery in East Yorkshire. If you got out of the wind and in the sun it was a really nice day, and the wildlife started before we even reached the reserve. Hares in the fields and rooks at their nests can’t be bad. Birding at the reserve started at the visitor centre, with a talk from the Warden and good views of pochard and goldeneye
Tophill Low belongs to Yorkshire Water so unsurprisingly the main attraction is two large reservoirs, but the whole site is quite marshy with woodland and smaller pools. With the strong wind it was always likely that a lot of the wildlife would be sheltering and so it proved. Most of us started with the northern reservoir, and mutterings of ‘quiet’ were soon heard. At least there were plenty of hides, and we could shelter from the wind while eating sandwiches. There were high spots as well; a sparrowhawk flashed past and a Cetti’s warbler shouted from deep in the undergrowth. A few lucky people saw a barn owl suddenly appear, and disappear almost as quickly, so we stayed optimistic – with good reason.
Things improved as soon as we moved to the southern reservoir. True, there was nothing particularly rare, but the ‘normal’ birds just kept coming. Teal, wigeon, great crested and little grebes, gadwall, cormorant – they were all there. A kingfisher sped across the water and back again, and people with telescopes picked out shoveller and pintail in the distance. Waders were few and far between, but a flock of lapwings passed overhead and a few oystercatchers were seen. The main disappointment was red crested pochard; there was said to be one on the reserve, but we never found it. The small passerines were a bit disappointing too; all the finches we had expected were present on the feeders with the common tits, but willow tits were supposed to be present and we missed them. In the end we counted sixty bird species – just one short of last month’s total, and perfectly respectable.
We looked for spring flowers, but in spite of the warm weather last month there were very few. Dandelions seem to be early this year, and quite a few of them were around as well as the occasional coltsfoot. In total, we saw eight flowering plants, four fungi and two mammals – roe deer and hares. Not a bad haul for early March.