Saturday 2 August 2014

Chobham and Wraysbury GP - 1 August 2014

We did an early morning start on the south side of Chobham Common, again to try and establish whether it has much of a migration through the site in late summer/early autumn, as undoubtedly in late autumn/early winter the site has a good passage of Redpolls through it. We went to an area we had done before without much success, and today proved to be exactly the same, but with a smaller catch of only one Goldcrest. At 9am, after three hours, we decided to close down. The area is probably not too good for Sylvia migration due to, it being heathland, very little to no blackberries on the site. I have seen once in mid August on the north side an area holding a fair number of Willow warblers, and it might be that other areas may be better for holding Phylloscopus Warblers, rather than Sylvia. Another exploratory visit to this area on the north side will be undertaken later in August.

Total :1

Goldcrest - 1

As this was the second, more or less unexceptional early morning outing, on the way back we stopped off at RG C6 side of Wraysbury GP, only a short walk from the car park and full of black berries. Despite only being there for a couple of hours 43 birds were processed, mainly Whitethroat, 18 new; Blackcap, eight new, and Garden Warblers, six new. What will be interesting, is that since the ponies have been fenced out of part of the site, I have never seen so many flowering plants, which should give a really good natural winter Finch feeding area, the question will be, will they find it, will they be attracted and in what numbers? They had attracted a couple of Clouded Yellows, that as they often do, just spent all their time whizzing around.





Total : 36 (7)

Wren -1
Robin -1
Blackcap - 8 (1)
Garden Warbler - 6 (1)
Whitethroat - 18 (4)
Blue Tit - 1
Great Tit - 0 (1)
Chiff-chaff - 1