Saturday, September 10, 2011

Saturday 10th September 2011

An excellent morning with obvious signs of migration throughout the morning. Thanks to DK for the following figures:


Steady stream of House Martins south totalled 236 plus 29 Sand Martins and
five Swallows.
3 Common Snipe south (first of the autumn)
1 Swift South
5 Siskins SE (first of the autumn)
3 Meadow Pipits south (first of the autumn for us)
22 Chiffchaffs, 21 Blackcaps, 2 Common Whitethroats, 1 Garden Warbler, 4  Reed Warblers, one Willow Warbler, one Spotted Flycatcher. 55 Long-tailed Tits  included a single party of 32.

JA and myself also had ~30 Pochard on 100 Acre big lake. While scanning the lakes 80+ Starlings came into a Hawthorn bush by the STW entrance. EG and Dave were ringing in the Rough and having a very good morning. We assisted with 20+ batch of birds that came out of the nets while we were there. I think the count was in excess of 60 birds for the morning by the time we left and they were still hard at it.

Met up with ranger Danny who showed myself and DK a bat box where 9 bats were roosting.

At the main lake hide counts for Mute Swans, Coots and Great-crested Grebes were all about normal for recent weeks.

All in all an excellent morning.