Warnham LNR - 2015 so far...

Wigeon - Warnham LNR

With the passing of the Christmas period comes new year and the lists all turn back to zero! As I wasn't in on New Year's Day this year the bird total for the 1st Jan 2015 was quite low so I decided to have a good few hours trying to count as many bird on the 2nd Jan as possible just at Warnham LNR.

If you follow me on Twitter then I apologise as you may well have seen some of the tweets already. My target for the day was 45 species, this was based on the fact that Stuart had seen 38 species just before Christmas fairly easily in a few hours. By the time I had opened the gates and fed the birds I was up to 31 species so it was looking pretty good.

With ease I was up to 40 species by 12.00pm having lucked in to some nice species such as Little Egret and Coal Tit. Next I headed into Walnut Tree Plantation hoping to see Goldcrest, Redwing and possibly Firecrest if I was really lucky. The pines also give you the best chance of seeing Lesser Redpoll, Siskin on Crossbill if they happened to be around. Alas no luck on the finch front but I did manage to find several Goldcrests and I also managed a complete fluke in the form of a Pied Wagtail flying over head. This is not a common species at Warnham LNR by any means.

I finally took a stroll up the northern end of the reserve and added Marsh Tit, Redwing Stock Dove. But no sign of any House Sparrow, Collared Dove or Rook which I was hoping for. It was just starting to get dark when I got back to Mill Meadow, I was still missing some easy bits and pieces such as Mute Swan!!!! To cut a long story short my final species was a flock of 76 Greylag Geese coming into roost which nudged me on to 51 species of bird. An impressive total considering the Reserve is in urban Horsham!

Meanwhile today on the Reserve brought a pair of Wigeon which are scarce winter visitors for us here. Sadly after I had done the morning bid count I could not relocate the birds but they are always nice to see and especially hear when you arrive at work.