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The highlight of my visit last Saturday was the first Wigeon of the autumn which DK had located on west Fingers. House Martins, Swallows and Swifts were all present and a Kestrel was also seen.

Wigeon (Eclipse male)

There is a guided bird walk this Sunday (26th) at 8am, meet at the visitor centre.

Note also the change in date/time for the September bird walk which will now be on Sunday 23rd at 9am, not on the 30th as originally planned.

Saturday 11/08/2012

Last Sunday the volunteer group were working in the park. The first task was to remove the Himalayan Balsam along the river between Cardington Lock and the Canoe Slalom. It seems a shame as this is a beautiful flower as seen below:

Himalayan Balsam flower

However as you can see below it is an extremely invasive non native species and soon takes over:

Himalayan Balsam

Having removed several blocks of this plant during the morning we moved over to the Finger Lakes in the afternoon where we removed 3 boat loads of Water Soldier from the east lake. This is another invasive species which is rapidly taking over the Finger Lakes this year. The plants sit below the surface and then rise up at flowering time.

This morning it was quite a foggy start over the main lake and the light was a little disappointing after yesterday mornings glorious start. I did catch this group of Canada Geese coming in to land in front of me and the main lake dipping platform is a good place for a Tern fly past.

Canada Geese

Common Tern

As I walked down to the dipping platform I had 12 Blackbirds on the New Meadow and 3 Greenfinch in the hedge by the Labyrinth. DK joined me at the dipping platform and immediately trumped my Blackbird and Greenfinch counts with 15 and 10 respectively.

EG was ringing in the Rough again so we stopped to have a chat and obviously brought some luck as the first birds of the day were extracted from the nets. A Green Sandpiper flew over calling. This Bullfinch was hanging around most of the time we were in the Rough but was avoiding the nets, at least until we left.

Bullfinch

Generally it was quiet with birds of note being the 8 Swallows over north east at the STW bridge, a Kingfisher by the main lake at the Visitor Centre and 2 Swifts in the same area. There were quite a lot of calling Chiffchaffs and we also had a singing Willow Warbler on the corner of the Finger Lakes opposite the Beach.

The sun eventually burned through the clouds and I had a very pleasant wander around Mowsbury Hillfort Nature Reserve. Goldcrest was note worthy among the birds and there were also a variety of butterflies around including Peacock, Brimstone, Large White, Green-veined White, Meadow Brown and Speckled Wood. A Brown Hawker Dragonfly was hunting in the Orchard.

Guided Walk - Sunday 29th July

There was a really good turn out for the guided walk this morning and for once the sun was out! We saw/heard most of what could be expected, at this time of year, on the bird front and because of the recent warm sunny conditions there were a few butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies about. The butterfly list was as follows:

Meadow Brown
Ringlet
Speckled Wood
Comma
Red Admiral

There were a few different dragonflies about most of which went unidentified as they sped past, however a couple of Brown Hawkers were found on vegetation giving us all great views. There were dozens of Common Blue damselflies around and Banded Demoiselles were also numerous.

On Saturday Morning, with DK, we had a Little Egret which flew in and perched up in the dead tree along the Spit and a Common Buzzard passed high over the south side of the main lake. Following are a few pictures from Saturday:

Comma butterfly

Mute Swan preening

Tufted Duck youngsters

Woodpigeon