I love my bird walking in East Lancashire and all through the winter I visit as many of our reservoirs as I can and for more than 30 years I have counted the number of each species.

Two of the most common of our diving ducks are the pochard and tufted duck. They both dive at different depths and so do not compete with each other for food.

I always take a stop watch with me on these visits and pochard's have a more vegetarian diet than the tufted duck and therefore they need to get right down onto the bed of the reservoir or pond.

A few pochard and tufted ducks breed in Britain but not many; most prefer to go to their breeding grounds in the colder areas of the north, but because our climate is much milder in the winter large numbers gather in flocks around our lakes and reservoirs. Large flocks can be seen in our area and on our town park lakes from now until the beginning of April. At this time of the year the males are seen at their best as they are now in a plumage designed to attract a female. These ducks are not so colourful.

But this is not surprising as they need to be camouflaged when they are incubating their clutch of eggs.