Tuesday 5 December 2017

05/12 Greenham Common Western Enclosure

I had not intended a visit to the Western Enclosure this week as at the weekend the weather forecast was poor, also there is not much bird movement on the heath this time of year. The weather being better than expected at dawn I decided to see what was there if anything. I put the usual 48metres (three rides) of net, up for  two hour, played the usual audio and got four birds: two new Blue Tits, a new Goldcrest and a re-trap Long-tailed Tit. This latter was one of 28 Long-tailed Tits captured on the 31-May-2017 (188day) and had not been captured again until today. Unusually for this species it appeared to be alone, no others were seen or heard all morning. All captures today were 1st calendar year birds, the Long-tailed Tit was a juvenile when ringed in May.
Sightings were also on the low side given I had plenty of time between captures to walk around this corner of the heath. A couple of quite noisy Dartford Warblers were feeding, each in different areas of gorse.  A lone Cormorant few west; the first of these over as far as I can recall for a while. Not a winter finch in sight and a small flock of Redwing the only winter thrushes seen. These reacted to the Latvian song but dropped into the mature birch trees to the south and stayed there feeding on the ground for most of the morning. One came over while I was taking the nets down but flew off on seeing me. Weather permitting the next ringing will be the Snelsmore Feeder at the weekend, that should keep us very busy, hopefully.
Sightings 20 species

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