Sunday 15th February

Still plenty of ice and laying snow around the park but the thaw has also caused a lot of flooding. The levels have dropped compared to yesterday and access around the south side of the main lake is now possible. I met up with DK along the main path and he was watching a Water Rail in the main lake reed bed. It tried to escape in my direction but was trapped between us for a while as we both had good view before it finally got its act together and flew towards the next Willow along.

Little activity on the, still frozen, Finger lakes although we did have ~20 Teal over. The crescent was impassable due to flood water. We did try but gave up with the water almost over the tops of our wellies.

Back to the steps and up past the Rough we had a Redwing over which stopped in the top of the trees by the main path. Past the Sedgewick Seat and out of the Finger Lakes section we had a couple of female Bullfinch in the top of the Long Hedge.

Kingsmead has its own flood pools and these have attracted good numbers of Pied Wagtails, around 72 today. These were joined by a couple of Meadow Pipits, 39 Canada Geese, 10+ Moorhen and 7 Cormorants.

Back to the main lake which was still pouring over the beach. Shoveler numbered 32 while Pochard were down to 59 and Tufted just 3. We had a number of Mute Swans over during the morning and the resident male was busy seeing off all comers. On the south east corner we had a couple of Kingfishers.

At the pipe the new all weather path had been washed into the flood channel covering the pipe. This caused a lovely vortex in the water on the opposite side as the water drained more slowly through the pipe.

That was about it, Fenlake was still iced over and just had a few gulls in residence, little else of note, although there were 15 Great Crested Grebes on the main lake, a big improvement over recent weeks.

Saturday 31st January

Fingers:

2 Shoveler
6 Little Grebe
2 Teal (1f)
~10 Siskins in the Alders around the Crescent
4 Reed Buntings in the crescent

Drumming Great Spotted Woodpecker in the trees opposite the Canoe Slalom.

Main Lake:

86 Pochard (15f)
8 Tufted (1f)
22 Shoveler
12 Cormorant
1 Great Crested Grebe

Feeding Station - Thurs 29th Jan

Jason has returned from his two year stay in Vilnius; so he joined EN to continue his training.

First net round was at 10:00 and the last at 12:00. A 40' at the old feeders & a 30' at the new feeders. Some squirrel activity. 28 birds netted of which 12 were new birds (and 16 were re-traps)

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker

Today's tally was (new/rt):
Gt Spot 1/0 (a male, see photos), Dunnock 0/1, Robin 0/1, LTT 0/5, Blue Tit 2/6 (incl. 2 from Box 1), Gt. Tit 8/3 (6 new ad.M, 2 new imm.F & 2 new ad.F), Treecreeper 1/0. The number of new GT was not expected; they probably come from further afield than the immediate park, drawn in to the feeders ("civilisation") as the winter progresses.

Treecreeper (JRC)

Other birds seen - 1 Stock Dove, 1 Reed Bunting, 1 GBB Gull, 1 Goldcrest & 20+ House Sparrows (count) near the VC.

We need some new 'Woodcrete' style nest boxes of both hole sizes (CJW's are cheaper @ £20) and to have them erected by the end of next month. The 'peckers may leave them alone, then.
Quantity needed - 10, and another 10 for next year? The wooden boxes have been up 7 years now and are quickly becoming useless for nesting.