Friday 23 August 2013

Marazion Marsh - 23 August 2013

The final day of our monitoring efforts dawned (since Saturday was forecast to be much too windy) and we were up at 5am and on the reserve within 20 minutes. This primarily because we had the extra drive of starting after light SE winds overnight. We put up two further nets to make the most of the newly mowed viewing rides and had Aquatic playing at every likely netted location. We also arrived to find the water levels significantly higher after the boards were removed to allow water in from the  high tide.

The nets in the newly mowed rides caught well early on giving us some reedbed species retraps as well as Stonechat and Reed Bunting.

 3M Stonechat
Age 3 Reed Warbler

Aquatics failed to put in an appearnace, but the SE wind did produce something as the morning ticked over slowly a Citrine Wagtail flew in to the pool, being identified, initially on call, by CL and local watcher DP. It wasn't long before a few phone calls were made and all the local birders turned up to wait expectantly for its reappearance. It took a while but the bird eventually showed well. There was also a Wryneck seen at Porthgwarra, so there were at least some drift migrants turning up!

Juvenile Citrine Wagtail (with ultra visible wing bars - even in flight.)

So the week had come to an end with no sightings or captures of Aquatic Warbler at Marazion and no more volunteers to man the coming weeks. There will still be some autumn ringing at Marazion but not on a daily basis (weather permitting) as would be the case, were there any more volunteers.

Total: 36 (5)

Wren 2
Dunnock 2
Blackbird 0 (1)
Sedge Warbler 13 (3)
Reed Warbler 12 
Chiffchaff 1
Whitethroat 1 (1)
Stonechat 1
Reed Bunting 4