Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Water levels are up at Houghton Green Flash at the moment, due to the heavy rain we have had over the winter. It's still a shadow of its former self, but at least it's possible to go with some hope of seeing something and today I even managed a year tick in the shape of six grey partridge! Not much variety on the water, but 40 wigeon were nice and about 20 mallard. I also flushed a couple of snipe and a buzzard flew over. Would it be naive to hope that the water levels might start to recover now? Probably.

Year: 163 (Grey Partridge)

You can see where the shoreline was last year, roughly at the point where the vegetation ends. I'm not actually sure whether this is an improvement or not, at least last year there was some mud for waders, but at the moment the water goes into the tall vegetation leaving virtually no shoreline for birds like redshank or little ringed plover etc. Still I'd rather see the water levels go up and the site recover over time, but we'll have to wait and see.