Recent News - 19/04/2017

The drake Garganey hung around until the weekend at least. No reports since Saturday but it might be hiding itself somewhere, you never know.

The Red-crested Pochards also seem to have departed but I got this picture of the male which looks quite weird front on like this!

Red-crested Pochard

A Cuckoo was heard near the Priory Wall on Apr 11 per Lin.

Lesser Whitethroat and Reed Warbler both at Priory on Apr 12 per TP. This is the earliest record of Reed Warbler in the park per DK.

On Saturday (15th) JA and I had a Swift over, again the earliest record in the park per DK.

Plenty of Willow Warblers and Blackcaps but Whitethroats are hard to come by. On Tuesday (18th) I finally caught up with a House Martin which was in a mixed flock with Sand Martins and Swallows over the main lake.

Here are a couple more pictures from recent encounters. Firstly a Chiffchaff at the Sewage Works bridge.

Chiffchaff

 And finally here's a Chiffchaff sunning itself in the Long Hedge up near the Kissing Gate.

Goldcrest

16th April 2016

Plenty of migrants around the park over the last week or so. Weather has been variable with plenty of rain and some sun. Saturday it was the turn of the rain and although miserable for us humans it seemed to bring in the birds.

There were a lot of hirundines over the main lake when I arrived, mainly Sand Martins but a few Swallows mixed in. Swallows seemed to increase as I watched the flock skimming low over the water, many perched up on the buoys for a rest. Many of the Swallows were looking a bit worse for wear, hopefully there will be enough insects about so they can feed up and return to A1 condition for the breeding season.

Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps are now in, in good numbers. I heard a single Lesser Whitethroat singing by the Labyrinth on Saturday morning. No Common Whitethroats in the park yet although DK had one on 100 Acre in the week.

Chiffchaff

The Finger Lakes Great Crested Grebes seem to have worked out what they are doing, nest building has kicked into high gear with occasional pauses for mating.

Mating Grebes

The neighbouring Coots already have 4 chicks but border wars continue with the Coots one door down!

Coot making a splash on the edge of his territory

Other species also have young by the looks of this Woodpigeon egg that I noticed floating on the Finger Lakes on Sunday morning. The neat edge indicates a successful hatching rather than a predation. The adult bird would then have carried the shell away from the nest to avoid attracting predators to the area. 

Wood Pigeon egg.

I was hoping to photograph the Grebes on Sunday morning as we had a lovely clear start to the day but they were much too busy with the nest building and mating to bother coming in front of the camera. The Coots were a little less shy and the male Mute Swan (Orange 180) did a quick check of his territory.

Coot

Mute Swan

As usual 100 Acre is the star location at the moment with a good variety of wildfowl and waders. Wigeon numbers are way down and I expect the last few to depart anytime. A pair of Red-crested Pochards have been around for the couple of weeks at least so wondering if they may nest if they haven't already. With all of the flood water waders have been stopping off as they pass by on their journeys north. On Saturday morning there were 14 Dunlins along with a couple of Little Ringed Plovers, a couple of Greenshanks, a Redshank and the usual Oystercatchers.

It's always worth looking through the Wagtail flocks at this time of year and on Saturday, with the Pied Wagtails there were a couple of Yellow Wagtails and a couple of White Wagtails.

White Wagtail

A couple of Wheatears were my first of the year and on Castle Mill there was a single Shelduck which I always like to see.

Back to the park and it's that time of year again so the rangers have started the egg oiling to control the Canada Goose numbers. The main lake island was the first port of call and the numbers show that we really need to keep doing this work to keep the numbers down.

• Canada 40 nests – 234 eggs treated.

The following nests were noted but left alone.

• One Greylag nest – didn’t count the eggs.

• One Egyptian Goose nest with 6 eggs.

• One Swan nest.

• At least 6 mallard nests.

The Canada Goose eggs are oiled and left in the nest so the adults keep sitting but the eggs won't hatch. If the eggs were just taken away the Geese would likely lay again so the rangers would have to keep visiting each nest to remove eggs throughout the season. There will be plenty more to do, all along the river as far up stream as Queens Park. There will be some that don't get found but at least we won't have hundreds of extra geese this year.

Canada Goose

Easter weekend

A long weekend in the park kicked off with my usual Saturday morning visit for a bit of birding with DK and JA. Before they arrived I was lucky enough to see an Otter on the Finger Lakes as it swam past the fishing swim I was standing in along the Spit. There is always a sense of excitement when I see an Otter and I was already for a photo session with this animal but that was the last I saw of it! I'm not sure how it gave me the slip as the water was flat calm but I didn't see another ripple, let alone the Otter. Still I've been waiting a while since my last Otter sighting so this, albeit short encounter, was very welcome.

Later we came across a set of Otter tracks over on the earthworks at Castle Mill. They've probably been there for a while but the water levels have dropped over there and they have now been revealed. It looks like the works over on Castle Mill have resumed so these tracks will likely be under a few feet of top soil in the near future. 

  

Otter track on Castle Mill earthworks

New in this week are Cuckoo, Reed Warbler and Common Whitethroat. There were also at least 2 Lesser Whitethroats around on Monday morning. The Sedge Warblers were more active in the STW reed bed with up to 4 seen and one even doing the display flight.

Chiffchaffs were quiet this weekend but Blackcaps hit their second wind with a count of 26 on Tuesday morning per DK.

Chiffchaff

The Flower Meadow has had a pretty good display of Cowslips this year and I grabbed a quick shot on Saturday morning.

Cowslips

I came across this Wren with a beak full of nest material on Saturday afternoon.

Easter Monday I spent the day in the park working on the Tern raft that we started a few months ago on one of the volunteer tasks. JA helped out in the morning along with Ranger Jane and between us we have it pretty much finished. Juts need some gravel, a few more bolts and a couple of anchors and we'll be there. Not bad given most of the materials are reused stuff some of which was fly tipped in the park. One man's trash is another man's treasure as they say.

I took an extra day off on Tuesday and went out oiling Canada Goose eggs with Ranger Danny. The rangers have already been out to the main lake island where they found 32 nests and oiled 165 eggs! We added another 60 eggs to the count with a trip up the river as far as Honey Hill Islands and a paddle across to 100 Acre island. On 100 Acre island we only found a couple of CG nests but we did flush 3 Snipe while we were searching.

All in all a pretty good weekend. Coming up this weekend we have the monthly guided bird walk which is on Sunday 27th at 9am. Meet at the visitor centre at 9am, see you there.

Saturday 14th December - Chiffchaff hunt

An unusual sight in the park was this Pheasant perched in a tree by the main path near the Steps. It seemed quite happy and did not move as joggers and dog walkers passed underneath. It's not unusual to see Pheasants in the park but I've never seen one here before. 

Pheasant

After last weeks Tristis type Chiffchaff along the cycle track we decided to have another look along there to see if we could find it again and maybe photograph it this time. Unfortunately we did not find that individual although we did have five Chiffchaffs, all seemingly collybita. The calls heard were certainly the collybita type call and the plumage seemed normal enough on all of the individuals. All were found along the track between the sewage works entrance and the corner of Meadow Lane.

Chiffchaff

The Golden Plovers and Lapwings were again in the crop field by the bypass although only in small numbers, much larger numbers were on the opposite side of the bypass. A passing Sparrowhawk put up the flock at one point. A single Egyptian Goose was still present in the same field.

Golden Plovers and Lapwings

Back in the park we watched this Grey Heron swimming in front of Kramer hide. The new Kingfisher perch was not in use but we watched a Kingfisher in a bush on the opposite bank. Hopefully it will progress to the perch in time.

Grey Heron

Following are a couple of pictures taken when the ringers were in a couple of weeks ago.

Redwing

Treecreeper

Always great to see birds in the hand but especially a couple of crackers like these two!

Ahhhh... Babies!

Todays bird ringing session - CES visit 5 at Priory Country Park - was dominated by juvenile birds.

41 birds of 13 species, 32 new & 9 retraps (retraps in brackets).

Chiffchaff 4 (2) - 5 of these were juveniles
Great Tit 4 (0) - all 4 juveniles
Wren 1 (1)
Blue Tit 7 (0) - all 7 juveniles
Long Tailed Tit 1 (0) - a juvenile
Bullfinch 1 (0) - a juvenile
Dunnock 1 (2) - of these 2 were juveniles (the other being a retrap adult)
Blackbird 4 (0) - 4 new juveniles
Robin 2 (1) - including 1 new juvenile
Blackcap 4 (2) - including 1 new juvenile
Greenfinch 1 (0)
Chaffinch 1 (0)
Song Thrush 1 (0) - a juvenile

That's a total of 27 juveniles. If you are interested in totals from our other CES visits, please click here.

Here are some of the cast from today:

Above: A juvenile Blackbird on the left and an adult female on the right for comparison.

Above: A juvenile Song Thrush - note all the thorn shaped markings on the wing.



Above: A juvenile Chiffchaff.

Above: A juvenile Robin (left) and adult Robin (right) for comparison. It will be a while yet before the baby Robin gets its own red breast - it has to replace and grow more feathers before that happens.

Above: A juvenile Bullfinch

Last weekend, we made a visit to 'the crescent' where we caught 20 different adult Reed Warblers moving between the reed bed and surrounding vegetation. Of the other 10 birds we caught, of note was our first juvenile Blackcap of the year.

First Cuckoo - 14/04/2012

Another first this weekend when a Cuckoo was heard by JA and then seen by us all as it flew in to the Willows along the Spit and called before heading further north along the Spit. We heard it a few more times but didn't see it again.

Also on Fingers were 3 Little Egrets on the usual fallen Willow at the north end of west Fingers. There was a pair of Gadwalls and possibly another male.

In the reed bed by the main lake at the south end of the Spit a Sedge Warbler was singing and we managed to track it down, along with a Willow Warbler that was close by. It didn't show very well, keeping low down in the reeds as is often the case when they have recently arrived.

We stopped off in the Rough where EG was ringing. We had great views of a Chiffchaff in hand and then sat on a branch after release. It spent a little while recovering before moving off singing and feeding.

Chiffchaff

At the STW bridge there was another Sedge Warbler singing and we managed to get decent views as it did a couple of flight songs but it was in heavy cover for this shot.

Sedge Warbler

We walked out to Meadow Lane and did a loop around the GP and the crop field however there was no sign of the Wheatears reported yesterday. We did find a small party of Linnets on the north side of the crop field and a single Swallow was spotted low over the crops. The usual Redshank and Lapwing were around in  small numbers on 100 Acre. A Common Buzzard was also seen over the river at the north side of 100 Acre.

Back in the park a couple of Jays over the south side was the highlight. A nice growth of Laetiporus sulphureus (Chicken of the Woods) was seen on one of the Willows by the river at the Fenlake Meadows watch point. There was little of note bird wise although a Common Buzzard was seen high over Fenlake a little later while we walked along the south side of the main lake.

Laetiporus sulphureus

We searched along the south side of the main lake for the Redstart which DK had seen on the 10th and the 13th but didn't find it. Following is a photo DK took on the 10th.

Common Redstart 10/04/2012 (©2012 Dave Kramer)

Back at the VC DK added the Cuckoo to the recent sightings board which is getting quite full now!