11/05 Thatcham Marsh LNR

Location: Thatcham March LNR CES v 2024.02.

Session: 11/05/2024 05:50 to 11:15

Notes: Still very muddy along the reed bed ride, water level is still similar to last week. The fishing club arrived around 08:00hrs in force including several types of plant. Drained the water under the bridge with a pump into the stream near the bridge to the reed bed and filled and compacted the area where water removed with gravel. One of the chaps who stopped to speak implied that we should not be there when they were doing their work. We put him straight on that. He didn’t know that the stream originally flowed under the bridge and that the culvert it now flowed through was in fact the overflow for the stream or that originally the stream should have been restored to flow under the bridge when the gravel extraction ceased but the planning condition for this requirement had been cancelled at the request of the fishing club we believed. He also said he was supprised that the railway had not done anything about the flooding refering to a similar sitiation on the southwest mainline where embankments had eroded and collapsed. We thought that if they railway did get concerned they would most likely enforce the stream returning back to its original course under the bridge. After he left we thought we maybe we should have asked to see their risk assessment!

It was a quiet session with little sign of any further Reed and Sedge warbler arrival, a little better than last year's matching visit though. Two juvenile Robin on the second CES visit is quite early. The highlight was at nets down when we found the Sparrowhawk in the net. It was as usual for this species quite aggressive got RAD and me with its claws and drew blood when we extracted it and from within the bird bag when we carried it back; think IW who ringed and processed the bird got away with it though.

Present: JL,IW,JHW,DL,RAD.

Weather: bright sunny, calm, warm.

Nets: 198metres in one reed bed ride and 6metre net in B scrub up from 06:30 to 10:30hrs

Lures: None

*FG full grown-age uncertain.

Recaptures:(16)

Cetti’ Warbler     ringed: 17/04/2022, 30/04/2023.

Chiffchaff            ringed: 16/04/2023.

Great Tit             ringed: 05/04/2024

Reed Warbler    ringed: 13/05/2017, 23/05/2021x2, 21/05/2022, 13/05/2023, 04/05/2024x3

Sedge Warbler  ringed: 04/05/2024x3

Wren                   ringed: 01/08/2021

Sighting: A Great Spotted Woodpecker drummed on one of the metal overhead gantries supports

and interesting sound. Little movement over, those that did included a Great White Egret, Little

Egret, Mute Swans, gulls and terns. No hirundine just a few Swift very high up.