31/10/2021

After the worst of the stormy weather had passed earlier today, I went to Nonsuch to see if anything had weathered the storm, and who was playing out. I was pleased to get 15 species after ~24 hrs of gale-force winds and torrential rain.

Making my way around the Park following my usual route, I ended up at P1 (Round Pond), and heard the Little Owl calling. I was really excited about this, because I've only had it near there twice before. Annoyingly though, it was just teasing me, as I really wasn't able to locate it, and soon after it went quiet (so had possibly moved on).

Side note: if it weren't for dog activity, I am sure P1 would have regular Snipe numbers.

I had given up looking for the LO, and was disturbed by an eruption of Carrion Crows. I think I'd managed to pick out a Sparrowhawk in amongst them, but the trouble is that everything looks like a Bird of Prey in this weather.

Again there was a lot of gull movement, and, after some studious research this weekend, I was comfortable in ID-ing them as Herring Gulls (not sure what else I had expected them to be!)

I was also very pleased to see that the (usually) dried-up channel is in fact supposed to be a stream, and is now fully operational as a stream! Now the bridges make sense. You know the birdwatching is drying up when you get excited about a dried-up stream being...not dried-up.

I ended up in ND1 which is great for Corvidae. There was the usual Jackdaw and CC activity, of them flying into roost. I made it around 50 Jackdaw and at least 100 CC, and I also had at least 45 Parakeet.

Haven't had any Redwing yet, nor have I picked up any of the reported Siskins, and Teal from previous years on site. Hopefully I'll get a patch tick soon, otherwise there might be more dried-up content.

I had visited the Park on 27th because I had the afternoon off work. I was there for about 2 hours and the most interesting thing to report was a sighting of three Grey Heron all at once. I'd had the most exciting sighting on the way there (a Red Kite over Kingston Road). Entirely possible it had flown over Nonsuch, but I can't tick it unfortunately.

The patch watches might be even less regular now (if that's even possible) with losing the hour of light, but I'll see what I can do (and maybe even try a few early morning shifts 🤯 )