Friday July 12 - Back to normal

The good news is that Lyn and I are both now officially recovered from the lurgy so the birding is back to normal. The bad news is that the patch is refusing to gift me any decent birds.

I suppose that's a little unfair. On Tuesday I counted nine Mistle Thrushes at Morton Bagot, which appears to be a site record. They'll just be local breeders but it's always nice to see a success story.

This morning I had another look at the patch and discovered that nine Green Sandpipers, two Little Egrets, and 30 Lapwings are still in residence. Earlier on I had joined the ringers at their Purity Brewery ringing site. It was my first visit, other than to buy beer, and I was pleasantly surprised by the area.

The brewery have constructed a series of small ponds to assist with its filtration system. I haven't quite got my head around the process but the result is a series of small ponds surrounded by reeds, ideal for Reed Warblers and Reed Buntings at least. They were also very happy to allow the ringers access, and even supplied us with a complimentary bottle of beer each. Now that's what I call birder friendly.

One of the lagoons

I'm very much not a ringer, more of a ringer's groupie really, and was in time to see one bird in the hand. 

Juvenile Whitethroat

I probably had the best bird when I flushed a Green Sandpiper, maybe the first for the site. It was also nice to see and hear a singing Yellowhammer as a reminder of how Morton Bagot a few miles up the road used to be.

The rather distant Yellowhammer

Today was also the start date for the Big Butterfly Count organised by Butterfly Conservation. I should make more of an effort to take part in survey work, and have vowed to turn over a new leaf. I duly counted the handful of butterflies which were on the wing from 09.15 at the brewery's wetland, and also did so at Morton Bagot. It is slightly irritating that the app won't allow you to record Skippers (presumably considered too challenging for the participants), but it still felt as though I was doing something useful for conservation.

The last couple of weeks of staring out of our kitchen window has reminded me how awful is the current state of the insect population. I think I saw one butterfly, a Meadow Brown, in two weeks. Morton Bagot is obviously much better, but even there the numbers seem to be lower than in previous years. It is of course a cooler than average summer, so hopefully that is part of the issue.

Anyway, my 15 minute stint at Purity gave me three butterflies of two species (plus two Small Skippers), while at Morton Bagot it was 31 butterflies of five species (plus some Small Skippers).

Gatekeeper at Morton Bagot

The ringing figures were as follows:

Blue Tit 1

Great tit 1

Chiffchaff 2

Reed Warbler 6 (1)

Sedge Warbler 1

Blackcap 3

Whitethroat 2

Wren1

Dunnock 1

Reed Bunting 1 (1)