England's National Nature Reserves

This was my first return to the Wash NNR since moving to Shropshire 16 years ago. I was the site manager of this, the largest NNR in the country, for 7 years and have a great affection for the site. My family at the time were less enamoured with the place and my young kids famously described it to a friend visiting from Australia as “a load of mud and a few weeds”. It is however a massively important place for migratory and wintering birds. And the salt marshes are really good for breeding redshank amongst other things.

I was passing on my way back from Norfolk, so decided to drop in and make it the first of the sites that I would visit as part of my tour of England’s National Nature Reserves.

February on the Wash can be quite bleak, with its big seemingly endless flat expanse and whereas I used to drive along the sea walls that are the inland boundary of the site, this time I was on foot.

Walking out from Peter Scott’s lighthouse on the river Nene takes a while before you can see the extent of the site and there is often little wildlife visible without a good telescope, unless it is a really high tide, due to the fact that there is a huge area of salt marsh between the visitor and the mudflats which is where the birds tend to feed. On a high tide, however, they do get pushed up closer, but often they are pushed further to the east and towards the Snettisham RSPB reserve. I visited there on the way to catch the high tide, where large flocks of black-tailed godwits, curlew and dunlin mixed with rafts of teal and wigeon, all in constant motion as the incoming tide reduced their feeding areas.

Back at the NNR I watched a large group of dark-bellied brent geese lift into the air and drop down into another area of grass and listened to the redshank’s call, they are known as the warden of the marshes as they are always the first to sound an alarm call.

The Peter Scott Lighthouse is an inspiring presence next to the reserve. It was built at the mouth of the river but now due to the building of new seawalls and land reclamation, it sits somewhat inland. This was where Peter Scott spent some of his formative years in the 1930s and started his first wildfowl collection before founding the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust and helping to create the World Wildlife Fund. So a place of real history in the story of nature conservation.