Holme Pierrepont, Saturday 30 May

Sue, Tom and I paid a visit to the Grange end of Holme Pierrepont on Saturday. There was a triathlon event on at the NWSC over the weekend but from the website it looked like Saturday would be the easier day to get in and park. The weather forecast also suggested that Sunday would be a washout and for once it was correct. However, on arrival at the usual car park there were attendants refusing entry but we noticed the old ‘B’ car park was open for spectators and was free to park so we headed for there.

On site the vegetation, away from the reedbeds, had gone wild and locating the guys and poles took quite a while but all were found eventually. Then we got to the reedbed nets and all was not well. To cut a long story short 5 poles had been taken and smashed. We found the remains of them and you may be able to see them in the following photographs. We found a large well constructed shelter and enormous hole in the the sandy area that has attracted campers in the past. The construction and hole was no small effort and I did think it was the work of adults, but looking through the rubbish left Tom found the cans were all pop not alcohol and so it may well have been kids.

We decided to limit the number of nets erected both for practical reasons and lack of poles but the sunny and breezy conditions meant the nets, particularly the couple we did put up in the reeds, were affected by the conditions.

The total catch was 21 (13 new/8 retrap) made up of: Blackbird 1/1, Dunnock 2/0, Wren 0/1, Robin 1/1, Blackcap 0/1, Garden Warbler 1/0, Sedge Warbler 2/1, Cetti’s Warbler 1/0, Chiffchaff 1/0, Willow Warbler 0/2, Blue Tit 0/1, Long-tailed Tit 4/0.

The retraps were all relatively recent, the oldest being from last year. Interestingly not a single Reed Warbler was caught and the reedbeds were very quiet. When we finished we hid the remaining poles somewhere else...

Kev