Since my last visit on Friday suddenly the Meadow has become extremely "birdy". The heavy rain over the weekend had done its job and the floods are now much bigger and indeed the two pools have now joined to make a single large one. They're still rather thin by past Meadow standards though the birds are certainly liking them. The Wigeon are back with a vengeance now with at least 350 of them on the floods along with about half that number of Teal. There were loads of Mallards today as well, probably several hundred in number. All the feral Greylags were right down in the flood area with two EGYPTIAN GEESE and six of the feral Blenheim WHITE-FRONTED GEESE in amongst them today as well.
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| The two Egyptian Geese today |
It was so windy this afternoon that it was hard to do the gull roost much justice. In any event they were extremely skittish and kept taking off en masse for no reason. There weren't that many large gulls about though there must have been a couple of thousand Black-headed Gulls there and more gulls of all sizes were coming in all the time at dusk as I left. Plenty of Pied Wagtails about in the area between the floods and the river - there must have been at least fifty of them and the large Linnet flock was still buzzing about the place. Counting all species there must have been at least four thousand birds on the Meadow this afternoon - it truly was a wonderful sight.
So all in all, it's looking pretty good now. The Meadow really does come into its own in the winter time and is one of the premier birding sites in the county at this time of year. We just need some more unusual birds now as a finishing touch to its revival.
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