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| Pintail (left) and Mallard on a reservoir - this one at Covenham, near Louth, in Lincolnshire |
BRITAIN'S ducks and grebes could face an unexpected new pressure.
Political momentum is growing for solar panels to be installed on reservoirs, lakes, lochs and other expanses of water.
This would bring Britain into line with countries such as China, India and Vietnam where they are commonplace.
Leading the charge is Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp in whose Surrey constituency, Spelthorne, there are four reservoirs, one of which already has a 24-panel solar array providing electricity.
Mr Jopp, a former Army colonel, has banged the drum for such projects in several 'Commons debates.
In one, he said: "I hope that I will in some way blow the House’s mind with what I am about to say and sow a seed that will grow into something fantastic.
"Spelthorne is not in Lancashire, nor in Lincolnshire. It is everything south of Heathrow until one gets to the River Thames.
"Hon. Members from around the House know my constituency well, because it is what they see when they take off from or land at Heathrow airport.
"When I first looked at a map of Spelthorne, I was struck by these four massive blocks of blue, so I looked into them.
"They are four raised reservoirs, which hold half of London’s drinking water.
"I was determined to find some way to utilise the total 2,000 acres of these bodies of water.
"I looked into it a little further, and came upon the concept of floating solar.
"This is a terribly simple concept: simply take solar panels, attach them to plastic floats, anchor those floats to the bottom of the reservoir and string some wires to take an alternating current from the floating solar panels."
Mr Jopp's Conservative colleague, Ben Obese-Jecty, thinks something similar might have potential not just at at Grafham Water in his own Huntingdon constituency but in neighbouring North East Cambridgeshire where plans by Cambridge Water and Anglian Water are advanced for construction, starting in 2029, of the Fens reservoir.
And this week it has been reported that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a renewables enthusiast, is poised to commission a feasibility study for such ventures across the UK.
The obvious upside is that using reservoirs for solar initiatives might reduce pressure on precious agricultural land.
An added benefit is that the panels are thought, based on data from Australia, to reduce water evaporation significantly.
But a downside - the potential loss of over-wintering habitat for Goldeneye, Smew, Great Crested Grebes and scores of other species - seems, so far, to have been overlooked by parliamentarians.
Says Mr Jopp: "There aren't many people who are going to complain about putting floating solar on raised reservoirs."
Of one of his inspections of the solar array at the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir on his patch, he said he saw nothing "apart from a few swans, a couple of seagulls and a man from the RSPB".
