31/10 Greenham Common

Location: Greenham Common Western Enclosure
Session: 31-Oct-2017 07:30 to 11:00hrs

Headlines: I arrived at about 07:30 to find it was much windier than forecast. Procrastinated for a while then decided to put up one net just to see and immediately captured a Goldcrest. Put up the second net and it started spotting with rain.. Waited for a while and the rain stopped so I put up the third net and it began spotting again then stopped. Redwings were dropping into the bushes close by so I retreated to the car. It started spotting with rain again. Checked BBC hourly weather, no rain shown for the rest of the day. Checked the rain radar to find that a large blue and green area of rain was heading straight towards me from the west; confirmed by looking west at heavy black clouds. Thought of taking the nets down but decided to wait, remembering that the rain clouds often move to the north, must be something to do with higher ground. Sure enough the clouds did slide northwards.  Frequent visits (in case it rained) to the nets produce two to four per visit, usually Goldcrests and once a couple of Redwings that unlike the many that kept dropping in stayed in the net. More Goldcrests and the odd Blue Tit followed and many false hopes as sometimes 20+ Redwing flew down around the nets and off again. Several flocks of Fieldfare flew low over, taking no notice of their song that was coming from the bushes. Went for walk around the outside of the enclosure and when I got to the south side a flock of about 15 Long-tailed Tits had gathered in a bush ready to cross to the enclosure. Instead they headed up at about 45 degrees angle. As they were about central over the enclosure and at about 50metres high they suddenly dived down into cover also several Redwings began weaving and flying erratically. I looked over to the northeast to spot a Kestrel fluttering in top of a bush not substantial enough to support it. A check of the nets expecting to find several tits produced one, two more Goldcrests and a Blackcap.  At about 10:15 a round produced four birds including another Redwing. After processing I returned to the net intending to take them down and found that another Goldcrest and four Redwings had been captured. Experience says if you don’t capture thrushes around dawn that you won’t capture any later, fortunately this didn’t apply this morning. 

Weather: Windy and a few spots of rain early, less of a breeze and sunny periods later, much cooler.
Present: JL
Nets: 48metres in three rides of 18M, 18M, 12M up from 07:45 to 10:40hrs
Lure (audio): Redwing, Fieldfare, Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Goldcrest, Firecrest, Siskin, Redpoll, Yellow-browed Warbler intermittently.
Capture (New/Recapture)

29(26/03)	No matching visit
Species New Rtp 1stCY 2ndCY+ BLACA 1 1 BLUTI 4 3 1 GOLDC 14 1 14 1 LOTTI 2 indeterminate REDWI 7 4 3

Recaptures: (3) Goldcrest 1y 11d (returning migrant maybe) Long-tailed Tit 153d, 139d

Sightings 28 Species: A good movement of thrushes again today mostly heading Southwest. Probably the most unusual bird was the Mistle Thrush, not had many of these this autumn. Five Hawfinch that I was reticent of are added in the light of "abundance" of records for this species this autumn. They flew over north quite high calling in a dipping flight. Bythe time I put down what I was doing and got my bins on them; they we to far away to get a detailed view, big finches though and I didn't recognise the call which was similar to Corn Bunting but not the same. Unfortunately IW is without his car today, otherwise might have had better confirmation.