Sheet 04WinterKlaipėda
Winter on the ice edge: long-tailed ducks, smew and a frozen lagoon
A frozen lagoon is not empty, it is a lid, and everything that was spread thinly across it in November gets pushed into whatever water is left open. Finding that water is most of the work in January.
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Where the water stays open
The lagoon freezes from the shallow southern end and works north, and in a cold January the ice can reach most of the way up to the city. Three things keep water open: the channel where the current runs out past the port, the shipping lane that is kept clear whether the birds want it or not, and the wind, which will open a lead along a lee shore overnight and close it again the next day. Where the open water sits changes weekly, which is why the winter entries are shorter and more often wrong.
Working out where to go means driving to the shore and looking, and I have spent a good many mornings doing exactly that and nothing else. The pattern that holds is this: goldeneye and goosander sit tight to whichever edge is nearest the moving water, smew prefer the quieter stretches behind the ice, and the gulls loaf out on the floes in the middle where nothing can reach them. A morning that finds no open water at all is still worth the drive, because it tells me where the birds will not be on Saturday.
The ice edge, and what stands on it
The edge itself is the best hundred metres of the winter. Ice against open water gives loafing room on one side and feeding on the other, and everything gathers along the join: goldeneye diving in the lane, goosanders strung out in lines, a dozen mute swans up on the ice looking like garden ornaments, and the white-tailed eagles that sit out there because a weakened duck is easier work than a healthy fish. Two eagles a hundred metres apart on the floes is an ordinary January sight here, and I still stop the car for it.
Smew are the bird I actually go for. The drakes are close to absurd at distance, white with fine black cracks running through them, and they keep to the sheltered water rather than the lane. Females and first-winters outnumber them and look like a duller species altogether until you have got used to the chestnut cap. In a hard winter I might see forty in a morning between the ice and the reed edge; in a soft one, with the lagoon open the whole way south, they spread out and I see six.
Noted on the sheet
- Work along the edge of the ice, not out into the middle
- Goldeneye and goosander in moving water, smew behind the ice
- Eagles on the floes mean something weakened is out there
- Never walk out on lagoon ice, whatever the fishermen are doing
Seawatching off the beach in a north-westerly
The sea runs on different rules. A north-westerly blowing hard for a day or two pushes birds inshore and makes the beach north of the city worth standing on, while a calm bright morning puts everything so far out that a telescope gives you specks and a headache. Long-tailed ducks are the winter constant, in rafts well offshore, and on a rough morning small parties come past near enough to show the pied heads and the long tail of the drakes. Their calling carries in over the surf, which is a better way of finding them than looking.
Divers are the other reason to stand there. Red-throated are the commoner of the two, low and fast and dead straight, and black-throated turn up in ones. Velvet scoters go past in lines with the white in the wing showing only when they bank. On the beach itself, among the weed left by the storm, shore larks and snow buntings feed in tight little flocks that will not let you within thirty metres, and the only way I have ever photographed one is to sit down and let the flock work its way towards me.
Dressing for four hours of not moving
Winter watching here is mostly a clothing problem. Four hours behind a telescope in an onshore wind at minus four is colder than any amount of walking at minus fifteen, and I have cut more mornings short for cold hands than for lack of birds. What solved it was giving up on gloves thin enough to write in and carrying a second pair instead, together with a pencil rather than a pen, because ink of any kind gives up long before I do.
The other piece is shelter. The dunes behind the beach have hollows out of the wind that still give a view of the water, and twenty minutes in one of them every hour makes the difference between a four-hour morning and a ninety-minute one. I write the entry in the car with the heater going, which breaks my own rule about writing on the spot, and I have made my peace with that. A legible note an hour late beats an illegible one on time.
Noted on the sheet
- Two pairs of gloves, and a pencil, because ink fails first
- A hollow in the dunes out of the wind, twenty minutes an hour
- Telescope low and sitting down: less shake and less cold
- Flask filled before leaving, not somewhere on the way