Nice weather for ducks
The surface feeding ducks have found the wet weather a bit of a bonus. The floods have floated seeds which had fallen amongst the grasses out of sight, and these seeds, along with drowned insects, are now floating down the rivers which the surface feeding ducks and waders are making the most of. By surface feeding ducks I mean Mallard and Gadwall, which I have pictured here but also include Wigeon,Teal, Shoveler and Pintail. The diving ducks have not enjoyed the floods as the water is too murky to catch anything so they have had to leave our rivers and go to somewhere the water is not muddy such as the gravel pits in the Deepings area. By diving ducks I am including the Great Crested Grebes, the Goosanders and Tufted Ducks, all species that were on the Welland on Sunday. We did not have any rain on Sunday but it takes two days for the water that falls in Leicestershire to get to us in Deeping Fen, so the results of Saturday's rain was with us on Monday and Tuesday.
Some people may think we are getting more extremes of weather than we used to have but that is not so according to weather records. The problem is that our rivers are getting shallower because they are never cleaned out, silt keeps coming off the agricultural land into our rivers which in many cases have been straightened out to help the water flow quicker and cause flooding in the valleys. We have more concrete and tarmac about us which the water doesn’t soak into, it just runs off helping to make floods.
Some people may think we are getting more extremes of weather than we used to have but that is not so according to weather records. The problem is that our rivers are getting shallower because they are never cleaned out, silt keeps coming off the agricultural land into our rivers which in many cases have been straightened out to help the water flow quicker and cause flooding in the valleys. We have more concrete and tarmac about us which the water doesn’t soak into, it just runs off helping to make floods.