It's been another good week on the Meadow. Whilst bird numbers have decline from the stellar heights of recent weeks there's still plenty to look at and we're still getting a reasonable gull roost in the evening. Indeed it was the gulls which provided the highlight of the week when the long-staying Farmoor juvenile ICELAND GULL popped over the hill to pay us a visit one evening. I got a text from Nic Hallam, the resident Farmoor gull watcher saying that he'd been watching this bird but that it had flown off at around 3:30 towards the Meadow and about half an hour later we found it in the roost. The 1w CASPIAN GULL was reported on a couple of evenings at the start of the week but hasn't been seen since. Apart from that there's been a smattering of YELLOW-LEGGED GULLS to keep the roost watchers happy.
The Iceland Gull
On the duck front there's not much to report. With the disappearance of the Green-winged Teal from Standlake mid-week I've been looking carefully through our Teal to see if it had turned up but to no avail. We're still getting a dozen or so GOOSANDER coming in to roost each evening though goose numbers are well down as they're back to grazing the Hinterland now. We did have a couple of dozen BARNACLE GEESE this week on one evening but not the huge flock of 170 birds.
I managed to catch up with a patch REED BUNTING along the stream just north of the Trap Grounds this week. They always seem to hang out here in the winter - I think that they are frequenting a garden bird feeder near by. SISKIN has also been added to the patch year list thanks to one visiting Martin Gebauer's garden feeder. Martin also spotted a RAVEN in Burgess Field this week and Nicola Devine added TREECREEPER with a Trap Grounds sighting. We've also now got GOLDEN PLOVER finally, thanks to a flock of about 500 birds that came in on the same day as the Iceland Gull.
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| The Reed Bunting |
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