It's a sad indictment of the state of the floods that my last update was more than a week ago. Whilst there has been enough rain to avoid them drying up total, they are a pretty sorry sight and the birds are shunning them. Even the Egyptian Geese have given up on them with just a few Black-headed Gulls the only birds to be seen. The OYSTERCATCHER has been around occasionally, there were a couple of SHELDUCK one day this week and the odd COMMON TERN has been seen but that's been about it.
Because of this, I've been paying closer attention to the Trap Grounds reedbed in the vain hope of finding something interesting there though so far it's just been the usual Reed Warblers. There are at least three singing males within the reedbed: when one starts singing the others soon join it so it's relatively straight-forward to work out how many there are. There was a smart male Reed Bunting there as well today and I saw a SPARROWHAWK flying around nearby the other day.
Burgess Field still has all the usual warblers. Fortunately the LESSER WHITETHROAT decided that it liked it because it's set up territory there. Let's hope that he is successful in finding a mate. Today there was a Kestrel hunting over the nature reserve, the first I've seen there for a while.
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| With no birds to photograph, flowers are going to play a more prominent feature on the blog over the coming months. Here's a nice colony of Field Pansy that I found in Burgess Field. |
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| ..and this is the flower of the biblically named Abraham-Isaac-Jacob, taken in the Trap Grounds a couple of weeks ago |
Sadly, the mothing has been pretty terrible so far with the cold, clear nights making for very poor catches.
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| This Figure of Eighty is co called because of the white markings on the wing |
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