Country diary: rain transforms the marsh into a haven for birds

Claxton, Norfolk: Separate sheets of water have become a pearly lake, home to gulls, wildfowl and waders in their thousandsJust a little downstream, people had been piling up their furniture in anticipation of flood. But here the exceptional rains came bearing gifts. For a week at year's end, the marsh was a lake, and where there might normally be a few dozen birds, on one evening I estimated 12,000 gulls, wildfowl and waders in one roiling flock.By day the mood was turbulent, as harriers and peregrines patrolled the valley. Wherever they went they aroused alarm-filled volleys of calls from the geese and wigeon, but that fear could intensify until the birds peeled off the ground in waves of panic when the climbing woodwind music of all those escaping wings was stirred into the chorus of their agitation. Continue reading...