12th March
Another opportunity to visit the common with a day of low wind and sunshine forecast, that gave us a chance to make another tour of the north side of the common, but shortly after leaving home the sunshine disappeared as I drove into fog, which was even thicker at the common. I meet Eleanor and Liz & Roger and initially we had a brief try for Dartfords without success. In the mist it just proved how inactive they are on a day without much sunshine in the damp and cool, so on the way back to the car I decided to try an area with some low trees next to a wet area for Redpoll. This was met with moderate success, producing 12 Redpolls and a Great Tit. Of interest was one Redpoll that was fairly pale, but not particularly stocky, weighing 12.3, with a wing of 75, that for a female was a high wing length, being at the very the top of the Lesser range. But, despite being pale, with white covert tips (which on Lessers are now becoming paler), the mantle was a brown and not outside the colour range of Lesser, but lacked any buff on the underside. The bird dropped a contour feather that was saved as it drifted down towards the ground, and may be sent off for DNA analysis if the person running the project is prepared to carry out an analysis for us.
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As the sun came out we packed up and moved further down the common and walked to an area from the monument car park, in which we had previously seen three Dartfords, which were still there and behaved exactly as they did last time, evading us, which is a shame as this is an area where they have been previously rung and it would have been useful to establish whether these were new birds or previously ringed birds. Another Lesser Redpoll was processed, making it 13 for the day.
14th March
Finally conditions looked right for the common when DKL was available to join CL. The morning began shrouded in mist so, as the warblers tend not to move about much in these conditions, we started the first part of the operation.
Stage one.
We arrived just before 9am and set a singe 60' net close to a pool where birds regularly come down to drink. We could hear Redpoll and Siskin calling from both sides of the net and managed a modest catch while we waited for the mist to clear. Out of just five Redpoll we were pleased to get one already carrying ring L231097 - not one of ours so we look forward to hearing where and when that first encountered a mist net.
Stage 2
Totals: 21 (1)
Robin - 2
Dartford Warbler - 1
Great Tit - 1
Lesser Redpoll - 16 (1)
Redpoll Sp - 1
Another opportunity to visit the common with a day of low wind and sunshine forecast, that gave us a chance to make another tour of the north side of the common, but shortly after leaving home the sunshine disappeared as I drove into fog, which was even thicker at the common. I meet Eleanor and Liz & Roger and initially we had a brief try for Dartfords without success. In the mist it just proved how inactive they are on a day without much sunshine in the damp and cool, so on the way back to the car I decided to try an area with some low trees next to a wet area for Redpoll. This was met with moderate success, producing 12 Redpolls and a Great Tit. Of interest was one Redpoll that was fairly pale, but not particularly stocky, weighing 12.3, with a wing of 75, that for a female was a high wing length, being at the very the top of the Lesser range. But, despite being pale, with white covert tips (which on Lessers are now becoming paler), the mantle was a brown and not outside the colour range of Lesser, but lacked any buff on the underside. The bird dropped a contour feather that was saved as it drifted down towards the ground, and may be sent off for DNA analysis if the person running the project is prepared to carry out an analysis for us.
The pale female next to a Lesser for comparison.
As the sun came out we packed up and moved further down the common and walked to an area from the monument car park, in which we had previously seen three Dartfords, which were still there and behaved exactly as they did last time, evading us, which is a shame as this is an area where they have been previously rung and it would have been useful to establish whether these were new birds or previously ringed birds. Another Lesser Redpoll was processed, making it 13 for the day.
14th March
Finally conditions looked right for the common when DKL was available to join CL. The morning began shrouded in mist so, as the warblers tend not to move about much in these conditions, we started the first part of the operation.
Stage one.
We arrived just before 9am and set a singe 60' net close to a pool where birds regularly come down to drink. We could hear Redpoll and Siskin calling from both sides of the net and managed a modest catch while we waited for the mist to clear. Out of just five Redpoll we were pleased to get one already carrying ring L231097 - not one of ours so we look forward to hearing where and when that first encountered a mist net.
A striking 6M Lesser Redpoll
Gorse breaking into bloom in the sunshine
Stage 2
View across the heather and gorse
With the mist cleared we got on with the primary objective and moved on to the South side of the common to search for Woodlark and Dartfords. We heard a Woodlark singing as we walked from the car park but having no luck with the audiolure we moved on. As the day progressed we also logged the location of 8 Dartford and 2 Stonechat, but it wasn't until we finally caught a single Dartford at 3pm ( by then it seemed like an awfully long time since we'd seen a bird in the net) that we got the final bird of the day.
5M Dartford Warbler
Totals: 21 (1)
Robin - 2
Dartford Warbler - 1
Great Tit - 1
Lesser Redpoll - 16 (1)
Redpoll Sp - 1