Washland

The Nene Washes is one of the two major flood storage reservoirs in the Cambridgeshire fens and today it was certainly fulfilling its function. Chris and I drove out to Eldernell in the afternoon, as several short-eared owls had been reported from the area. When we arrived we wondered where they were going to hunt, as virtually all of their usual foraging area was under water.

As there was no sign of the owls we had a walk along the barrier bank, and watched a pair of distant marsh harriers putting up hundreds of lapwing and pintail. The gentle calls of whooper swans were a perpetual sound track to our walk, even though they were scarcely visible. 

As dusk fell we headed back to the car-park where we saw a barn owl emerge to hunt over the fields behind the washes. We soon realised that there were also two short-eared owls in the same area, though by this time the light had gone and photography was impossible. After standing by the fence ( with a very noisy bunch of bird photographers, who I'm sure scared the owls away) we went up on the bank to just soak up the atmosphere. A group of whooper swans flew overhead, and just as we reached the car a barn owl hovered for a moment over the flooded washes, it's white face standing out against the inky dark water.

It took a while to get back home because of the heavy traffic, not helped by a male mute swan walking down the middle of the main road, which had slowed everyone down to a crawl. Chris got out of the car, rugby tackled the swan, and carried it back to the adjacent King's Dyke, where fortunately it decided to stay!