Saturday 5 May 2018

Ebird Global Big Day at Beddington Farmlands

Our group managed to log 70 species today at the farmlands- the highlights being Red Kite, Common Buzzard, Common Sandpiper and Tree Sparrow. Ebird list HERE.

Here's a few pics from today.

 Common Whitethroat
 Common Buzzard- looks like a juvenile bird lacking the black tail band and black trailing edge to the wing
 Common Sandpiper
 Male Gadwall dispalying
 Least Black Arches- the second one this year 
 Knot Grass- a first for the year 
 I presumed this was a Syrphus hoverfly- there was a large group of them under the oaks by the Horse Field and later when walking the baby along the Wandle saw a big group of hovers there too over the river. I started reading up about the id of yellow-and-black banded hovers and got rather confused. Here's a few notes (above and below) and what the relevant id bits are and what features your looking for. I was trying to see if I could do the necessary identification without having to kill it- I let it go after a while when it looked like it was getting too tired but couldn't photograph the necessary bits such as the squama so I'm calling this a work in progress. 

This looked like Sweet Chestnut growing right on the edge of the recording area- if it will be a first for the farmlands 

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