Saturday 9 April 2011

More Buzzards





The high pressure and clear skies continues with more Buzzards (pic 1) today. It has been a good week for raptors at the farm (see : http://www.diporglory.co.uk/page3.html )

Whitethroats are now in (with three males along the path) and a group of 7 Sand Martin are hanging around checking out the Sand Martin bank.

There are several pairs of Greenfinch- pic 2 (4-5 singing males), 2 LRP are also prospecting and 2-3 pairs of Shelduck.

The good weather is good for butterflies- including this Green-veined White (pic 3).

A noteable influx of Lesser Black-backed Gull today (150+ present).


Still looking for a Ring Ouzel or a Common Redstart- they seem to be every where else in London.

3 comments:

Chris Dunn said...

Hey peter, what design/type is the sand martin bank at Beddington? Word is we are going to do one here in Toronto, just curious as to preferred artificial sites.

cheers
Chris

Peter Alfrey said...

Hi Chris,
all I can say it dont copy the Beddington one. It cost 40K, replaced a perfectly good natural bank with a thriving colony of Sand Martins and in ten years has hardly been used.
The Sand Martin colony transfered to another part of Beddington (a few old pipes in a canal) and largely ignore the expensive artificial bank. :-)

Chris Dunn said...

Sounds about right. So your best bet is probably to just dump a massive pile of sandy stuff somewhere then pretend it's absolutely, definitely not for the sand martins.