DEEPING LAKES
20 years of patchwork: Part 2 Reflections of birding at Deeping Lakes It’s been a spring of rediscovery for me. During lockdown I’ve got very much back to basics and come full circle with my birding, and rediscovered the joys and rewards of regularly watching my local patch – Deeping Lakes. As I explained last month, it was some 20 years ago that I first started watching Deeping Lakes on a regular basis.
Redstart
During this time the reserve has changed in many ways. For starters, the East Pits were still being excavated and the West Pits were only just landscaped. The Lake was known back then as Dandridge’s Lake, was strictly private and hard to view. Eventually Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust acquired the land and even bought Dandridge’s Lake. Pathways were created and hides erected, a car park installed and now my quiet little patch is a popular destination for family walks. The spring is always a season I look forward to, as the winter gives way, the landscape explodes into colour and with it there are new birds and discoveries to be had. Each spring is different and Spoonbill looking back over the 20 years there are clearly winners and losers. Breeding Lesserblack backed and Herring Gulls are a relatively new colonist to the reserve in the past five years; however, Black-headed and Common Terns are well down in terms of breeding pairs these days. We now have breeding Cetti’s 30
Warbler, which just wasn’t present 20 years ago but has expanded its range in Britain, whereas we have completely lost the Turtle Dove as a breeding bird on the reserve and I haven’t seen one there for ten years or more. Bittern are now regular winter visitors and it can only be a matter of time before they try and breed in the mass of reed-bed habitat on the reserve. Cormorants now breed on the Lake as well as the Mere and Little Egrets, , an incredibly rare visitor 20 years ago, now breed nearby as well. What leads to these changes? Well, for some it’s a natural expansion of range but for others, like the Turtle Dove, the reason for their decline is almost certainly man-made, whether it is habitat loss or hunting. It’s not just the birds that I have seen changes with; the reserve is a riot of colour now in early summer with hundreds of Marsh, Common Spotted and Pyramidal Orchids in bloom. We only found the first Pyramidal just shy of 20 years ago by the western pits. I used to see mink regularly but these days, otter families
