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Wildlife at Heathlands FarmWe established two conservation ponds at Heathlands Farm soon after buying the property. This is a people exclusion zone, which is now home to a rich variety of wildlife and birds. A pair of very rare Garganey ducks caused great excitement when spotted with their eight ducklings in June. The ducklings were two weeks old when they were caught on camera while honing their skills in the water. The numbers of Garganey (Anas querquedula) apparently never exceed 100 pairs for the whole of Britain. The drake has a distinctive pale eye-stripe on a mottled brown head and his identifiable call is a grating sound like the rapid clicking of a tiny ratchet or a fisherman’s reel. They are normally seen in reed-fringed pools on freshwater marshes. There are also two fishing ponds with excellent stocks of carp. The largest carp specimen ever landed weighed in at 24 pounds. |