Country diary: The unassuming gadwall deserves a closer look | Ed Douglas

Dearne Valley, South Yorkshire: At a reserve with some fascinating history, I'm taken by a courteous couple drifting on the lakeIt's 20 years this month since the RSPB took over the management of Old Moor, a 220-acre wetland reserve in the stilled heart of South Yorkshire's coalfields. There's an exhibition at the visitor centre telling its story by way of celebration. It's the start of the Easter holidays and small flocks of children are zooming through blossoming scrub in the warm spring sunshine. The hides are quieter and after a long bike ride from Sheffield, I settle down for a rest with a view across the mere, the largest of several bodies of water on the site.Old Moor was created when the mines closed in the late 1980s. At my back is the village of Manvers, where the pits and coking plant became the largest derelict site in western Europe. The ground was so toxic from a century of heavy industry that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clean soil were taken from Old Moor to cover the site. It is now a business park. Continue reading...