Sneaked a visit in today despite the weather forecast. It was much calmer than expected when I looked out of the window pre-dawn. I decided to have some breakfast and then see what the weather looked like. With very little wind and no rain from the overcast sky, a bit late, I drove up to the common to see how it looked. I nearly turned back after unlocking the gate to the common. Towards the west the clouds looked very dark and blue. The wind however, was coming from the south where gaps in the lighter coloured cloud gave brief views of the rising sun. On reaching the enclosure and with the rain radar showing no rain for about 20kM radius I put up the nets. I immediately captured a Blue Tit before I turned on the audio. A Brambling with a couple of Chaffinches flew over calling. As soon as I turned on the first playlist, the first Goldcrest of the morning was captured. Throughout the morning three more Goldcrest followed and two Blue Tits. One of the latter escaped as I took it out of the bird bag. This is the second time I have lost a birds like this in the last week or two, perhaps I am getting bit too casual. Three nets were up for about 2.5 hours and it started to spot with rain as we took them down at about 10:30hrs. Last years matching visit we captured 15 which included seven Goldcrest and a Redwing.
As we were not that busy we did a lot of walking about but only manage a sightings list of 24 species of mostly the usual ones seen recently. Another Brambling went over calling and we were able to get some brief flight views. Early on it looked quite promising movement-wise but unfortunately it didn't come to much. JL with IW.
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