This day dawned with minimal wind and a cloudless sky, allowing us the luxury of a pleasant morning bathed in warm sunshine. Nets were set up in the reed bed with the aid of new longer pegs in situ to render it possible to locate them and secure nets more easily in the still flooded ride. A double was put up on the spit lined with brambles, a single placed in the filter bed ( now completely solid under foot ( no longer quick sand thank goodness) and a sixty sited by the lake in what we know to be a main thoroughfare for birds going between the vegetation around the lake and some brambles that start a loose hedgerow formation that continues on to the weedy banks of the large soil heaps.
We were pleased to find that we had caught a ringed Whitethroat within minutes, and even more so on realising that it was, in fact a control.
Early morning mist hanging over the lake.
We were pleased to find that we had caught a ringed Whitethroat within minutes, and even more so on realising that it was, in fact a control.
Whitethroat Y665319, a 4M
We continued catching with a real sense that there were a few birds about, as we listened to a Cetti's Warbler singing from the banks of the Colne, tracked the progress of a common Cuckoo as it coo cooed all around the site and from time to time caught the calls of Little Ringed Plover from the direction of the fields beyween the old gravel workings and Staines Moor. We were pleased to catch the first Reed Warblers of the season, and all four were unringed prompting us to wonder whether some or all of these birds had not yet reached their destination and would be moving on shortly.
We caught a pair of Great Tits, busily in the process of nest building evidenced by the amount of moss dropped in the mist net, and found that the male X905912 had not been caught since it was ringed, at the site as a juvenile, in July 2010.
Garden Warbler, Y225155, that sang from the willows in the filter bed for most of the morning, apart from the brief time it spent in the mist net then bird bag awaiting process, was a bird ringed at Wraysbury GP, while a juvenile, in 2011 and was recorded there a few times during that autumn.
Garden Warbler Y225155
Another interesting bird was a Long-tailed Tit CNB932. This bird was ringed on 4rd April 2011, but not at Stanwell, but Chobham Common some 15 miles or so away.
Total: 11 (8)
Wren -0 (1)
Dunnock -1 (1)
Blackbird - 2
Song Thrush - 1
Reed Warbler - 4
Lesser Whitethroat - 1
Whitethroat - 2 (1)
Garden Warbler -0 (1)
Blue Tit - 0 (1)
Great Tit - 0 (2)
Long-tailed Tit - 0(1)