28th June

Sorry for the lack of updates but I've been occupied with other things and haven't actually had much of a chance to visit the Meadow of late. There is finally some bird news to post about: first of all a WHITE STORK was seen circling over Summertown on Saturday late morning before heading southwards where it was eventually relocated at Culham in a field near the Thames. Whilst this is just outside the Patch catchment area it's still great to have such a rarity in the general area. Regular readers may remember that we had a bird actually on the Meadow briefly back in May 2011.

The White Stork at Culham courtesy of Badger
The second piece of bird news is more mundane but did at least happen on the patch. Today I finally visited the floods to find them still looking very healthy with the recent rain having topped them up nicely. There were loads of Black-headed Gulls about including lots of juveniles so they've had a great year breeding. The interesting bit is that I did manage to turn up a GREEN SANDPIPER working its way along the North Shore which was great as this is in fact a year tick.

I've rather been neglecting the Trap Grounds as well but fortunately there are some very keen and regular visitors there so we have news of the first sightings of some larger dragonflies with a Common Darter and a Southern Hawker both seen there by Nicola Devine.

Female Southern Hawker courtesy of Nicola Devine

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