Local birding...

20/1/08 Denver Sluice, Welney WWT and Tottenhill; James and Simeon
I started early and was at the sluice by 8am. The floodplain had become waterlogged with all the rain over the past few days and hundreds of birds had been attracted to it.
Down the road, Welney had flooded completely and all the land was underwater, so all the wading birds had moved to Denver Sluice!
On arrival at the sluice, hundreds of Lapwing were on the fields and 8 Whooper Swans had roosted in the water and were begining to wake up. 5 Wigeon were flying about and 30+ Teal were on the water too. I called James and he came down too, with a scope. We managed to pick out 100+ Golden Plover swirling above us in amongst 700+ Lapwing! When the flocks landed, we found 9 Ruff, a new species for the sluice! 2 Curlews and 2 Black-tailed Godwits (another first for the sluice) were also present. Then a Sparrowhawk zipped across and put everything up. I went home and James shortly followed.
After lunch we headed to Welney and on arrival, we quickly got the three Bean Geese in the field behind the visitor centre near the haystack. The main hide produced nothing of note at all so we quickly moved on to Tottenhill to try for the Smew.
We saw about 10 ducks overall, which is very unusual for this time! There are usually loads of Wigeon, Pochard, Goldeneye, Tufted Duck, Pintail etc. But today there were only about 7 Goldeneye, 3 Tufted Duck and 2 Great Crested Grebes. It was rubbish. It had been good to see so many birds at the sluice in the morning though.
Hurry up spring!!!