Documentary Unit - Research into documentary - Birds

In order to familiarise ourselves to the documentary subject, wildlife, each member of the group, including myself, took it unto themselves to get to know a specific area of the documentary. For example one person will get to know the turbines, how they work and the positives and negatives they bring to the environment whereas someone else will get to know the location and habitat. My job was to look into what birds you can expect to find at each time of the year and their general behaviour.

Finding out what birds will be available when was not too hard to find. This information can be found on the RSPB website as well as the Elmley website. However general bird behaviour is not quite so easy. Though there is information available online, the behaviour of the birds has been altered due to the position of the turbines, meaning you have to be there to really understand it. I got a bit of information on this through word of mouth on our first visit to Great Bells from Nick May and more on our second visit with Phil Haynes.

Here is a list of just some of the birds you can expect to see at Elmley at this time of the year. In all there are 52 known species of bird at Elmley with a total bird population of almost 24,000.

It's hard to say how many of these birds we saw during our visits, but I was able to identify a small portion of the birds listed. The Wigeon for example was very easy to spot, almost making up the entire population, they are frequently seen by the large ponds by the bird hides. These were particularly easy to film due to their large numbers.

Birds such as the Marsh Harrier however were a lot harder to spot and far harder to film. We often only caught glimpses of the Marsh Harrier and often didn't have enough time to get the camera out and film them. They only ever hung around for about 5-10 seconds before swooping back down in the distance.

One of the more common birds at Elmley and Great Bells, the Wigeon

A Marsh Harrier in flight