Holme Pierrepont, Saturday 22 August

Gary, Sue, Alex and I made another visit to the Blott’s end of Holme Pierrepont today. Our decision to go to that end of the site was made for us when we could not get into the car park at the water sports centre. The forecast was for a dry morning with little wind and cloudy but as usual they got it wrong! By the time we had set the first net line it had started to rain, fortunately it stopped fairly quickly and we continued to put up nets. After the first round the clouds disappeared and the sun came out and stayed out. Fortunately the forecast did get the low wind strength correct, so 1 out of 3!

Catching started quite well and continued to be pretty good all morning. We ended on 69 birds including 6 retraps. The species totals were (new/retrap) Dunnock 2/1, Wren 4/1, Robin 0/1, Song Thrush 1/0, Blackcap 21/1, Garden Warbler 6/0, Whitethroat 3/1, Lesser Whitethroat 1/0, Reed Warbler 5/0, Chiffchaff 12/1, Willow Warbler 1/0, Blue Tit 3/0, Long-tailed Tit 2/0, Greenfinch 1/0, Bullfinch 1/0. The retraps were all recently ringed birds.

Overhead was also fairly quiet with a Buzzard, a few Yellow Wagtails and few hirundines. There was also a flock of 100+ Goldfinch on site that we decided would have been a little too testing to have a go for, but maybe next time with, hopefully, a bigger team.

Kev

 Lesser Whitethroat (Sue Lakeman)