Holme Pierrepont, Sunday 3 September

Duncan, Trish, Jake, Sue, Gary and I went to the Blott’s end of Holme Pierrepont today. An overcast but still start looked promising but the forecast was for a freshening wind as the morning went on and it did get breezy by the time we finished. Two MP3 players were going but the site seemed quiet after the last few weeks of good catches. We started slowly and it never really picked up. The best bird was certainly a juvenile Grasshopper Warbler that found its way into the top shelf of a four shelf net. This is the first Grasshopper Warbler the group has caught since 2014 and the first at Holme Pierrepont since 2011. When we do catch them it is usually adults in the first half of the summer, the last juvenile we had was in 1996.

We ended with a total catch of 46 including 11 retraps, made up of (new/retrap): Dunnock 1/0, Robin 1/0, Blackcap 14/1, Whitethroat 2/0, Lesser Whitethroat 1/0, Grasshopper Warbler 1/0, Chiffchaff 3/0, Reed Warbler 1/0, Sedge Warbler 1/0, Blue Tit 0/1, Great Tit 4/0, Long-tailed Tit 3/6, Treecreeper 1/0, Bullfinch 2/2, Reed Bunting 0/1. The oldest retrap was Bullfinch from 2014.

Overhead were plenty of House Martins and a Hobby put on a good show all morning including a fly past just above our heads when we were at the base.

Unfortunately the morning was spoilt by an idiot who thought his needs were greater than anyone else’s. Jake arrived a little after the rest of us and parked his Ford Ka in one of the parking bays just outside the Skylarks gate. At about 10.00 am a man came to find us as he had just witnessed a youth in a black hoodie smashing the window of the Ka and taking something from it. It turned out he had taken a cheap and old sat nav worth next to nothing. Jake knows he should not have left it on show but it was too late by then. Several members of the public were extremely helpful in coming to find us, watching the car when another was looking for us and calling the police and getting a crime number. We would like to thank them for their actions. Jake called the police again when he got to his car but despite one of the members of the public having just seen the culprit further down the lane, and had a description, the police did not really seem interested. There were another 3 cars parked in the bays with Jake’s but his was the only one damaged, perhaps the others would have been targeted if the culprit had not been disturbed.

Kev

Dawn, Sedge Warbler and Grasshopper Warbler (S. Lakeman)