Rainham tip - 11 February 2012

I made a trip over to a North Thames Gull Group session along with a couple of other Runnymede RG members at Rainham on this occasion. The temperature was around minus 5 but with no wind to speak of and sunshine it made the day quite pleasant and bearable. The tip was fairly busy with Gulls, with a good number of Common Gulls present, probably having been pushed off their usual feeding haunts, with the fields frozen hard. A couple of catches were made, with two fairly quick fires, resulting in 437 Gulls being caught.

Common Gull - age 7i

Tipping area

2nd catch

Yellow-legged Herring Gull - 3

Yellow-legged Gull - adult (10)

Totals (new - 423 , re-trap - 5, controls - 9)

Black-headed Gull - 182 (7)

Common Gull - 44

Herring Gull - 158 (6|)

Yellow-legged Gull - 2

Greater Black-backed Gull - 2

Lesser Black-backed Gull  - 35 (1)

West London run around - 8 February 2012

With the effects of the current weather making a bit of local birding potentially worth while I had a run around some of the West London reservoirs and adjacent areas. I started off at Queen Mother Res where the Great Northern Diver was still present, followed by 15 Smew at Wraysbury GP, then Staines Res where there were three Black-necked Grebes, two Smew, two male Scaups and the Shag still present. Another attempt was then made for Whiet-winged Gulls with visits to hedgerley and Knowl Hill lnadfill sites, both failing to produce any of the target Gulls, but two Caspians at Hedgerley and a single at Knowl Hill. A couple of colour rings were picked up at Hedgerley, one from the North Thames Gull Group and another from the Severn Gull Group. A retunr visit to the Gull roost at Queen Mother Res, again also failed to produce any white-winged Gulls.

Hedgerley Landfill - 7 February 2012

A quick visit on route to work aiming to catch up with either the Glaucous or Iceland Gulls proved fruitless, but there was an adult Caspian and Mediterranean Gulls present.

Weston Shore - 5 February 2012

We were planing to joint Pete Potts and others for a catch on the Solent water today, but with the falling of snow overnight it looked unlikely we would get out. But, the thought of ringing Ringed Plover or Dunlin for the first time, had me at least messing about checking motorways cameras to make sure I could get there. Cameras checked, motorway clear, Denise deciding she having stiffened up too much from the previous day at the orchard remained behind. The journey was surprising easy and quick. After a short wait, the required flock of mainly Dunlin arrived in the right spot, a quick fire and the flock mainly seemed to be flying away - the middle cannon did not fire and we only had three birds. Well, four, one was under the net somewhere and made good an escape, so we had two Ringed Plovers and a Turnstone to ring and colour mark. Having so few birds, with trainees present, I felt trying to claim one of the Ringed Plovers was not the right thing to do, and there will always be another day. Managed to get some colour rings off waders on the beach before we left.

 Ringed Plover

Turnstone

Totals (3 new):

Ringed Plover - 2

Turnstone - 1

At home Denise had a disappointing day in the garden, despite the cold few birds coming in, perhaps influenced by the fact the neighbour feeds next door and the net might be quite obvious in the white snow.

Garden total (5 new, 3 re-traps):

Robin - 0 (1)

Blackbird - 1

Blue Tit - 0 (1)

Starling - 2

Siskin -  2 (1)

Home Cottage Farm - 4 February 2011

With conditions ideally right to bring in the Thrushes to the remaining apples with the hard frozen ground conditions we had the first net up by 7am. Whilst we were fortunate to catch five Fieldfares, numbers in and around the orchard were relatively low, therefore not helping our chances of a big catch. The first round was quite productive, but after that things slowed down, but a nice mix of birds were caught, making the morning fairly worth while, with our first new Green Woodpecker in a few visits.

Green Woodpecker, adult female - with old secondaries 

on the right wing and new one on the left

Fieldfare - 5 male

Great Spotted Woodpecker - 5 male

Totals (29 new, 4 re-trap):

Green Woodpecker - 1

Great Spotted woodpecker - 1

Dunnock - 1 

Robin - 2 (1)

Fieldfare - 5

Blue Tit - 1 (2)

Long-tailed Tit - 4

Starling - 1

Chaffinch - 2 (1)

Goldfinch - 10

Greenfinch - 1

We closed up by 12.30 and upon returning home Denise continued ringing in the garden, whilst I head off to Hedgerley landfill in search of the Glaucous and Iceland Gull that have been seen there recently without any success, but 35 Red Kites were seen around the tip area during the visit in one go.

Denise's totals were (9 new, 1 re-trap)

Long-tailed Tit - 1

Siskin - 2

Goldfinch - 5 (1)

Greenfinch - 1

Queen Mother Res - 3 February 2011

Spent an hour watching the Gulls come in, but a slight ripple and the light conditions did not make viewing optimum, but no large white-winged Gulls were seen to come in, despite one Iceland Gull and probably two Glaucous Gulls being in the area. There was a 1st winter Little Gull though, plus one of the wintering Great Northern Divers and one of the Peregrines.

New Forest - 1 February 2012

A minor RG outing, well two of us, with some free time off, we decided to have some bad birding time, so we both headed off to the New Forest. With a day of brisk wind, taking the temperature below freezing it was not an ideal day to be out with birds keeping low and any slight chances of Dartford Warbler being much reduced, as expected we failed to locate any and time out causally wandering around birding was much reduced by conditions.

First call was to Calshot, yes to see the Spanish Sparrow which duly put in an appearance in appropriate hedge. Afterwards we took a look, at the sea and marsh areas, debating how good some of the area looked for ringing sites. The marsh only held a few waders, Bar and Black-tailed Godwits, Grey  and Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Redshank and Turnstone, plus a single Brent Goose, with alas a very obvious broken wing. The sea proved very quite.

We headed next to Hawkhill Inclosure, but stopping as we head through Fawley at the local cafe, thanks to a well paced sing on a car roof, to ave breakfast served on silver platter usually used for the large Sunday roost they turn out. A pair of Crossbuill showed well at Hawkhill and after a moderate rate the dark-eyed Junco appeared on the fallen conifer tree in the clear area to fed on the seed that had been put out, that was mostly being consumed by a number of Reed Buntings.

Afterwards we headed to Blackwater Arboretum, but there was no sign of any Hawfinch, or much else early afternoon, which was followed by a couple of attempts for Dartford, but with birds not showing to well in the conditions we decided to head back.