Last year I didn’t see a starling murmuration so I headed to RSPB Ham Wall on Thursday hoping to see one. 10mins after leaving home I hit the first bank of fog, it cleared a little and at some points I saw the sun but as I got closer to Glastonbury, again the fog appeared. The weather said it would clear around midday. I headed out on the reserve and made a bee line for Tor View hide, to say it was foggy would be an understatement! As I headed along the footpath, a little bird flitted into the hedgerow; a blue tit. There were a number of people in the hide but as people moved on a seat became available. The fog was thick but it gave a different perspective to the reserve; although you generally listen to the birds, their calls in the fog were more prominent. I liked that the lapwing were swirling around in front of the hide and the occasional duck would slowly appear out of the gloom.
Every now and then someone would call marsh harrier and everyone would start looking for it, it would be visible and then vanish, then appear again. Trying to take photographs in the fog was interesting, it was a case of forgetting the ‘normal’ shots you would want to take and make them more abstract or ‘arty’. Focusing was the biggest problem, there was just no contrast.
As the fog lifted a little, the other birds that had been using it as a cloak slowly began to appear… kingfisher, mallard, moorhen, coot, teal, tufted duck, and gadwall were distinguishable and didn’t need to just be called a ‘duck’ anymore.
I was heading back towards the car park for lunch when a man let me know a pair of bearded tits had been seen in the Mini marshes. I wasn’t lucky enough to see them, they had vanished when I got there and then shortly after a sparrowhawk flew from a nearby tree, I didn’t think they would be seen anytime soon!
The fog had thickened again so after a walk along a few of the trails I headed back to Tor View hide in the hope of seeing a murmuration. A great white egret landed over to the left of the hide and a tufted duck swam closer to keep us entertained as the light levels slowly began to drop. After a while of waiting a small woosh of starlings flew over head, then a little later another, as the numbers increased they would suddenly appear from nowhere the only clue they were there was the sound; like a wave breaking on a pebble shore. They dove down into the reeds in front of the hide chattering as they went.
