Icy pool with heron and snipe Water-levels were high after January rains, the lower hide inaccessible, the track to causeway hide might overtop our walking boots, so the warden advised us. He wore wellingtons. With the coming of cold floodwater had turned to ice, spectacular and challenging. The Sky Tower was closed, being a hazard. Sunlight on frozen pools and on reedbeds was beautiful and the soundscape of thaw and melting ice was all about us. Alder and willow carr were ice-bound, with beautiful pattern created as ice locked onto water-logged trees and grew, trapping air-bubbles.
For water to turn into ice there must be a crystal-seed, a small impurity from which an ice crystal will grow, something to which the crystal can attach. That's how ice-crystals and snowflakes form.
The morning is still and calm but the sun sets to work and within the seeming-stillness there's the sound of ice-melt in the reed beds and twinkling lights as the low sun catches melting ice-droplets and refracts the light, sparkling blue. The surface of the pools is a palette of textured blues as free-flowing water meets ice, mirroring the blue of the sky.
The morning is still and calm but the sun sets to work and within the seeming-stillness there's the sound of ice-melt in the reed beds and twinkling lights as the low sun catches melting ice-droplets and refracts the light, sparkling blue. The surface of the pools is a palette of textured blues as free-flowing water meets ice, mirroring the blue of the sky.
Waterbirds were sunlit and distant, in the free-flowing water by the reeds on the far side of the pool. Someone saw an otter, always a highlight. A heron was reflected in ice, a lone snipe hunkered down in the reed stubble of an islet and in the distance were pintail, shoveler and teal.
A group of coot stood on ice close to the hide and I remembered a birding friend saying their feet reminded her of Christmas cactus. After a while the group set off to cross the ice and the spectacle was so unusual, coot sure-footed if rather waddling.
Coot walking on ice gives the perfect opportunity to study its unusual foot which is not webbed. Each toe is separate, with lobed sections of blue-grey skin and with a claw to grip the ice. Look closely at coot's foot images and you can see the lobes on each toe and the claw, like a mini-ice-axe. The coot's claw gives it a sure grip, like the spikies I'm wearing over my walking boots.
RSS Feed