Thursday September 22

I arrived in grey cloudy conditions, the overnight drizzle having barely ceased. Fortunately the cloud had rolled away to the east within an hour leaving a morning of sunny intervals and an extremely light north-westerly breeze.

My first impression was that there were a lot of passerines about, including about 50 House Martins, 50 Swallows, and an apparent increase in Dunnocks and Robins. As I headed along the track towards the copse at Netherstead, I was surprised to hear a Willow Warbler singing. This beat my previous latest date here by eleven days. Unfortunately it soon stopped and must have retreated towards the copse, where all I could see and hear were about three Chiffchaffs.

I made slow progress towards the pool, logging a Lesser Whitethroat, two more Chiffchaffs, and four Blackcaps before disturbing a Muntjac which rushed away across the stubble field.

Muntjac in full retreat

A little further on I located a Whinchat in the hedge bordering the now almost dry pool.

Whinchat

Several flocks of Canada Geese, totalling 63 birds, headed west, but there was no sign of a Barnacle Goose with them. At least one Grey Wagtail and a modest 27 Meadow Pipits flew over. The Flash field was hopeless, containing just nine Teal and a Greylag Goose. I did however see a Kingfisher for the second visit running.

The final say comes from the sitting Woodpigeon.

Still sitting

I investigated the nest and found this;

Rather tragically the bird is sitting on a stone. I had a look at my last photo and noticed that the same stone is just to the right of the nest cup. This means that either some well-meaning person has picked it up and placed it in the centre of the nest (which I suspect is the case), or somehow the bird has moved the stone to the nest itself.

The bird returned to its nest after I withdrew, and I am now in a quandary as to whether I should intervene and "predate" the stone since the bird is clearly wasting its time sitting on it, or continue to observe to see how long it takes the pigeon to realise its error.

Tricky one.