Recently.....

Great work by all the volunteers last Sunday. We started the work cutting back the Elders on the north side of the Finger Lakes. Despite a dodgy forecast we had a good turnout and managed to get quite a bit done with the bonus being that the rain held off so we all stayed dry. We'll probably be back there again next month to finish off, especially as the water levels around the park will likely prevent us working on most of the other tasks that need to be done.

There has been plenty more rain this week and the main lake is overflowing at the Beach making good use of the new sluice the volunteers built last year. The river level has fluctuated during the week bringing flooding to the east side of the Finger lakes and Press Mead on and off. This weekend the level has dropped back a bit and the park is accessible all round although wellies are the preferred footwear still.

Saturday dawned clear and bright with no frost. At least 6 Little Egrets were in the roost with 4 moving out onto the flood waters on Kings Mead at first light. Still only a few hundred Jackdaws at roost but still quite a spectacle when they all get up, especially with a beautiful sunrise behind them like this morning, what a noise!

Kingfishers are active around east Fingers and the north east corner of the main lake. We also had a visit from some of the 100 Acre Lapwings but unfortunately we were along the Spit so we missed a low level pass over the main lake, just managed a snap as they headed back to 100 Acre.   

Lapwings high over the main lake

Plenty of Song Thrushes singing around the park, this guy was at the Kissing Gate in some nice early morning light.

Singing Song Thrush

The bright start to the day provoked a Chiffchaff into singing by the STW entrance. There were only low numbers of Golden Plovers on 100 Acre along with ~350 Lapwings. There were at least 8 Little Grebes on Meadow Lane GP.

The flood waters are always worth checking out and there were 32 Pied Wagtails on Kings Mead when we returned to the park.

Duck numbers remain relatively low although they vary from day to day. Shoveler, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Gadwall and Teal can usually be found along with the resident Mallards.

I popped down to neighbouring Willington GP on Saturday evening for the Starling roost but hardly any showed up. I will check again sometime but it looks like the roost may have moved elsewhere. The sunset made up for the lack of Starlings and there was a good number of Lapwings on the flood water in the field with the Barnacle Geese.

Lapwings

 

A handful of Starlings

The moon showed well!

The Moon

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.