23rd July

News or rather lack of news from the last couple of days. The highlight was the first obvious migrant.

The day started in Richmond Park with yet again another glorious sunrise over London. there was a mist over the low areas, including Pen Ponds.

Families of Green Woodpeckers seemed to be on a lot of the tracks in the park. In some areas two pairs were only yards apart.

Lower Pen Ponds held on to the mist longer than Upper Pen Ponds, these photos were taken only a couple of minutes apart.

Whinchat: one was perched on bracken in the Skylark area at 6.45am this morning. It was chased off by an over territorial Meadow Pipit.

There is a distinct lack of Swifts in all the parks. In the short time (2 years) that I have been working in the outer parks I witnessed Swifts and a few Sand Martins feeding either over Pen Ponds or the grasslands of Bushy Park.

Yesterday the terns were very active over Pen Ponds at 5.40am. Today there were only 2 adults present at a similar time, maybe they turned up later after roosting somewhere else. In previous years I have watched terns fishing over the waters of the Diana fountain in Bushy Park, there have been no records this year.

 

At this time of year the easiest way to tell drake from duck Mandarin is by the colour of the bill, the drake being reddish and the female grey.

There are good numbers of Starlings feeding on the open areas of Bushy Park. They have to be on the alert in case one of the birds of prey, this morning it was a Musket (male Sparrowhawk) which can be a  great stealth hunter.

Low level attacks could quite easily take out a Meadow Pipit