07/08 Greenham Common

Location: Greenham Common Western Enclosure

Session: 07-Aug-2019 07:30 to 11:30hrs

Notes: Although the forecast was for it to be windy, like yesterday, I decided to do a session. Early it was not as windy. I allowed some slack in the vertical shelf strings of the net, making the “pockets” deeper; this seemed to work. We had one or two each round until late in the session. As we entered the enclosure about 09:45 we noticed a small bird dive into a clump of gorse. This turned out to be a juvenile Dartford Warbler and we jinked it into the nearby net. On the next round we had what appeared to be a fall of Willow Warblers; 6 of the 7 birds extracted and there were several others in the surrounding scrub. Today was dominated by Willow Warblers; no Chiffchaff detected. Of the Sylvia Warblers, Whitethroat dominated with two Garden Warblers. It looked like we would miss out on Blackcap, however the last round produced two, the only ones detected all morning. By this time the heavy cloud that had skirted around the plateau was now coming straight at us, so we quickly took the nets down and beat a hasty retreat. It began raining heavily as I closed the gate off the common.

Weather: sunny, warm, breezy, brief light shower, clouding over at end of session.

Present: JL, IW

Nets: 48metres in three rides of 18m, 18m, 12m, up from 08:00 to 11:00hrs

Lure (audio): Misc. Migrants, Warbler, Redstart, Swallow intermittently 

Recaptures: (20) both recent

Capture (New/Recapture) 23(21/02) 6 Species	Matching Visit: (Wed) 08/08/2018 13(13/00) 4 Species
Species New Rtp Juv Adult BLACA 2 2 DARWA 1 1 GARWA 2 2 ROBIN 1 1 WHITE 3 2 5 WILWA 12 12	Species New Rtp Juv Adult BLACA 1 1 GARWA 2 2 GOLDC 1 1 WILWA 9 9

Juvenile Dartford Warbler probably a local bird (IW)

Sightings 31 Species: There was quite a lot more activity around the enclosure compared to yesterday; might have been more than one Dartford Warbler.

Blackbird (1) Blackcap (2) Bullfinch (1+) Buzzard (1) Carrion Crow (3) Dartford Warbler (1) Dunnock (1) Garden Warbler (2) Goldfinch (23) Great Spotted Woodpecker (2) Green Woodpecker (3+) Greenfinch (2) Jackdaw (12+) Jay (1+) Kestrel (1) Lesser Black-backed Gull (7)

Linnet (18+) Magpie (5+) Red Kite (1) Robin (2) Sparrowhawk (1) Starling (9) Stock Dove (2) Stonechat (6+) Swallow (3+) Swift (6+) Whitethroat (8) Willow Warbler (15) Woodlark (8) Woodpigeon (10+) Wren (2)