Barnes still on ice

Trip to London Wetland Centre with the boys - eldest off his reins to hard to get any birding done while keeping him out of ponds and ditches. Although warmer than recently all the small bodies of water are still iced over and even the larger ones are half covered in ice.

At least one Chiffchaff still on site (by entrance lake) also Shelduck, c200 Tufted on Main Lake, a flock of around 25 Redwings behind the Sheltered Lagoon, Bittern at the back of the Reservoir Lagoon, half a dozen Snipe, c50 Wigeon and circa 200 Teal.

Below: London Wetland Centre usually supports a flock of around 50 Wigeon from autumn to early spring.

This Bittern was taken at around 900-1000 feet which (partly) explains the poor quality of the shot.

Bittern thoughts

I was having a think about the likely origin of the Barnes Bitterns. I assume that the birds we get at the start of the season are from Scandinavia or Baltic states whereas when we get individuals later in the year these are either displaced by hard weather from elsewhere in the UK or from the continent. I did find some interesting info on just how widespread Bitterns are in winter compared with the highly localised breeding population.

Below: winter distribution of Bitterns.

Sites where Bitterns were recorded between October 2009 and March 2010 (Source: RSPB)

This compares with the breeding distribution of confirmed booming males (left, blue dots) and confirmed nesting attempts (right, purple dots). Source: RSPB.

The 2009-10 winter was pretty hard so this may exaggerate the difference - with more sites reporting Bittern than usual.

More info on this article from Birdguides.

Barnes Bittern new in

I'm trying to get the Saturday morning trip to London Wetland Centre with the kids built into the weekend routine. I’m keen to make this work since it creates some extra birding time in the week which is otherwise quite limited. The eldest boy is nearly two and the youngest is 8 months, which means the time available for the trip is pretty short after food, sleep times and getting the kids ready and loaded into the car are taken into account - factor in London traffic and we’re talking about not much more than an hour on site.

From Dulverton Hide the newly arrived Bittern was showing moderately well (for a Bittern). I’m still pretty stunned by just how regular a site for Bittern Barnes has become. Considering this is a pretty small patch of reeds in the middle of London it’s amazing that Bitterns are now annual here – at times there have been four birds present simultaneously.

The Bittern's there somewhere

There it is

There have also been other arrivals – Wigeon numbers are up from under 10 to around 16 birds, and Teal have increased from around 40 last week to around 60 this week. 3 Common Gulls. While Lapwing, Shoveler, Gadwall, and the rest of the ducks seem to be on around the same numbers.

Numbers of Wigeon are up slightly this week

But Gadwall numbers are unchanged

Over the site a flock of four Linnets, one or two Grey Wagtail, a Great spotted Woodpecker over high. Local bird taking a short cut or a migrant? I guess the odds have to be on a local bird but interesting nonetheless. There are still a few Chiffchaff around – 4-5 in the southern half of the site that I covered today so probably a dozen or so across the whole site.

The Big O (Lakenheath and Weeting)

Trip up to Lakenheath to try and pick up Golden Oriole. The last time I came here was about 25 years ago when there was no visitor centre just loads of trees. This time walked through reed beds alongside the plantations to the furthest where at least one Golden Oriole was singing. Headed up to the viewpoint where the Cranes were sometimes around but no luck. Apparently one of the pairs had lost their chicks earlier in the breeding season. Did get great views of Bitterns (a dozen or so views of probably 4 individuals) and Marsh Harriers.

This Sedge Warbler was singing not far from the path on the way back.

Following Lakenheath dropped into Weeting to pick up Stone Curlew and also picked up Spotted fly.

2010 Kick Off

Kicked off 2010 at one of my local patches, London Wetland Centre. 52 spp with a few nice birds: Mealy Redpoll (at about the 5th attempt), Bittern, really good numbers of Redwing (40+) and a couple of Chiffchaffs, dipped Cetti's for the 6th time.

Got rounded up by David Lindo for photo supposed to show a bunch of birders in spring. Except it's January and it's friggin freezing. We shed the hats and gloves and unzipped the jackets... to show about 5 layers of fleeces. Ahh, the ways of these media types.