Blakeney Conservation Duck Pond - a brief review and species list

DesertRhino150

DesertRhino150

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
The Blakeney Conservation Duck Pond is situated in the village of Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast, which I visited today and wanted to note down my thoughts and the species list.

Some history and background first: the duck pond was created and is still managed by the Blakeney and District Wildfowlers Association; it was opened initially in 1977 to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Unfortunately, in December 2013 the site was destroyed and the ducks killed after a powerful tidal surge. The enclosure was repaired and restocked with ducks by October 2014, after the sea wall was repaired. This is the same enclosure as can be seen today.

The entire collection is housed in a single enclosure, with a large pond stretching from one end to the other. The enclosure is slightly sunk and is viewed from either a path along the side of the road, which looks along the long side of the enclosure or from the sea wall, which looks down the enclosure from one end. The entire enclosure is surrounded with a tall chicken wire fence topped with electric fence strands. Although most of the enclosure is quite open, there is enough marginal vegetation for the birds to hide away if they so wish. One thing I quite enjoyed was that the enclosure backed onto natural reedbed habitat, so while I was watching the ducks in the enclosure there were also wild bearded reedlings and redshanks calling nearby.

As for the species list, there were all the species on the three signage sheets by the enclosure. Those with an asterisk next to their name are the species that I did not see on my visit:
Northern pintail
Tufted duck
Common shelduck
Common pochard
Mandarin duck
Ferruginous duck
Barnacle goose
White-faced whistling duck
African comb duck
Blue-winged teal
Bahama pintail
Carolina wood duck
Chestnut teal
Chilean pintail
Chiloe wigeon
European teal
Cinnamon teal
European wigeon
Fulvous whistling duck
Hawaiian goose
Hooded merganser
Rosy-billed pochard
Maned goose
Marbled teal
Northern shoveler
Puna teal
Red-breasted goose
Red-crested pochard
Ross's goose
Ringed teal
Smew *
European eider *
Lesser white-fronted goose
Cape teal
Ruddy shelduck *
Laysan teal *
Common goldeneye
Emperor goose

The main species visible here are mallards, but they are not signed and seem to be a 'fly-in, fly-out' species at the collection. Even so, there seem to at least be pairs of almost all the birds here.

The website for the duck pond is included below:
http://www.blakeneyduckpond.org.uk/
 
Interesting... I had no idea it was still there, and always assumed it was a private collection. Family holidays as a child took us to the north Norfolk coast and it was one of the places we used to visit, many of which are no more...
 
Andrew Swales said:
Interesting... I had no idea it was still there, and always assumed it was a private collection. Family holidays as a child took us to the north Norfolk coast and it was one of the places we used to visit, many of which are no more...
Click to expand...
The other place locally was Bob Cooke's collection at Salthouse, two pens on the saltmarsh, some birds at liberty on the roadside dykes, and more birds behind his house. It's possible he was the first person to breed and rear Russian Brent Geese, which nested under a caravan in his garden.
Bob died in the 1980s, and the collection is of course long gone.
 
FBBird said:
The other place locally was Bob Cooke's collection at Salthouse, two pens on the saltmarsh, some birds at liberty on the roadside dykes, and more birds behind his house. It's possible he was the first person to breed and rear Russian Brent Geese, which nested under a caravan in his garden.
Bob died in the 1980s, and the collection is of course long gone.
Click to expand...

You are quite right! - and I am left with another 'tick' on my list of closed collections visited (I'm up to 50 now!). It was the collection at Salthouse I remember, (not Blakeney), with the long lane past it running over the dunes to the sea. With your prompt, and some help from Google maps, there were indeed birds behind the house on the southern side of the coast road. I remember a crab-shop just down the road selling local fresh cooked crabs, and think that was in Salthouse too
 
Andrew Swales said:
Interesting... I had no idea it was still there, and always assumed it was a private collection. Family holidays as a child took us to the north Norfolk coast and it was one of the places we used to visit, many of which are no more...
Click to expand...

I remember driving past this once or twice when visiting the area. Like you I assumed it was somebody's private collection, just on land that was not near their house. I didn't know it was a joint effort.
 
FBBird said:
The other place locally was Bob Cooke's collection at Salthouse, two pens on the saltmarsh, some birds at liberty on the roadside dykes, and more birds behind his house. It's possible he was the first person to breed and rear Russian Brent Geese, which nested under a caravan in his garden.
Bob died in the 1980s, and the collection is of course long gone.
Click to expand...

And don't forget that not far away on the fens at a lighthouse at Sutton Bridge on the edge of the Wash there was once a very comprehensive waterfowl collection owned by someone called Peter Scott.....
 
Andrew Swales said:
You are quite right! - and I am left with another 'tick' on my list of closed collections visited (I'm up to 50 now!). It was the collection at Salthouse I remember, (not Blakeney), with the long lane past it running over the dunes to the sea. With your prompt, and some help from Google maps, there were indeed birds behind the house on the southern side of the coast road. I remember a crab-shop just down the road selling local fresh cooked crabs, and think that was in Salthouse too
Click to expand...
Crabs were more or less sold out of someone's front room. And bunches of samphire. Bob Cooke had a pet Patagonian Conure, and his gravestone in Salthouse churchyard has a black swan carved on it.
 
Unfortunate news today from the Blakeney Conservation Duck Pond - bird flu has been recorded at the site and all the captive birds have been culled. The future of the pond is uncertain, as the disease is now endemic in the area and no birds will be allowed to be added for at least a year.

Information comes from the Pond's Facebook page.
 
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