15 April 2012

A rather cold morning with quite a heavy ground frost, clear blue sunny skies, temp 3c, wind was a very light N, visit from 06.10 - 09.10.

Not a bad morning visit today with three species added to my Westport year list, again good numbers of Warblers were present with ten Chiffchaff, a big increase in Willow Warblers with eight present and also eight Blackcaps, a nice surprise was a Raven flying over the housing estate towards Goldenhill area which was my first year tick of the day, most of the Mute Swans were on the main lake with 21 present in total, also on here two Great Crested Grebe and 34 Tufted Duck, on the grass bank my second year tick was the very late arriving Little Ringed Plover, two together, these normally arrive in March and are very late this year, the photo below is the best from a bad lot as it was still a bit to dull for a decent photo.

A couple of Pied Wagtails were also on here, a couple of Collared Dove flew across the main lake as did the first of seven Swallows, all were seen over the main lake except for one on the old gas works, the reserve was rather quiet with just Willow Tit of note, on the old gas works two Stock Dove and a Lesser Redpoll flew over as well as at least three Greenfinch and a Great Spotted Woodpecker could be heard close by, on the old sewage works a single Starling flew over as did a couple of Meadow Pipits, down by the visitor centre a couple of Mistle Thrushes, a Kestrel could be seen over the top of the main lake and a Jay flew over, lastly and my final year tick of the day was a House Martin over the main lake with the small group of Swallows I mentioned earlier.