My Patch, Fly Flatts ( Warley Moor Reservoir).

With several roads inaccessible through snow up here in Queensbury, cancelling the days birding ,Ive put together a small piece about my patch, Fly Flatts reservoir, an area I watch weekly, sometimes daily as well as putting Nyger seed down on a regular basis in a hope to get the once popular Twite back to the moor.
                            Fly Flatts, also known as Warley Moor reservoir is owned by Yorkshire Water and is a permit only area other than the track down the north end of the reservoir which is a public footpath down to the water but then takes you over the moor with no access along the west banking.
                          The reservoir is home to the Halifax Sailing Club , the highest sailing club in England at 1350 feet above sea level with 90 acres of water. Throughout the summer the club has sailing lessons, races and several functions along with wind surfing. The hardy members up there turn out in all conditions ,sometimes with winds making the reservoir look like the north sea. A link to their website is on my blog for anyone interested.
                          Birding is by no means easy up there usually working in adverse weather conditions with no shelter around the water. Fog and wind are the worst enemies being so high up and openly exposed . Having said that the rewards are good having an area away from the general public with very little disturbance for birds and birder.
                          With over 50 years of birding up there, the last few years being the most intense, I,ve produced a list of 116 species of bird but this doesnt mean there are wall to wall birds, far from it, several visits come away with a blank and it can take weeks of trudging the area before a decent bird is found.
The water level rarely drops to expose decent shoreline and when it does this is mostly peat, an environment that gulls dont like, but it has still produced 18 species of wader along with 19 species of waterfowl and 10 species of raptor.
                                                   Just last year two new species for Calderdale turned up there which I managed to get photographic evidence of, these being Caspian Gull and Great White Egret.
A few of the other megas that have shown there over the years are :-

Great Northern Diver                                   Grey Plover
Great White Egret                                        Knot
Whooper Swan                                             Sanderling
Scaup                                                            Bar Tailed Godwit
Long Tailed duck                                         Turnstone
Osprey                                                          Jack Snipe
Red Kite                                                       Grasshopper Warbler
Caspian Gull                                                Snow Bunting
Yellow Legged Herring gull                        Shorelark
 Twite                                                          Greenland Wheatear 
To mention just a few of the rarer species.
Lynda , my wife, says she would have my ashes scattered up there but with the constant westerlies
they,d end up back in Queensbury.

                                      Click on to make bigger

Many thanks to YW and Halifax Sailing Club for their support.
BS