Here you will find details of wildlife events in Elmbridge and any unusual sightings in Elmbridge or nearby. Please email one of the Editors if you think an unusual local sighting or details of a local natural history event warrant a mention here.
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Wildlife Diary MID-WINTER BIRDS Another mild winter (so far) has meant that many of our usual winter visitors haven’t needed to travel to these shores in order to find mild conditions. Wildfowl numbers, especially, are well down on a normal winter. A visit to Slimbridge in mid-January found that the grassland, usually covered in geese, waders such as lapwings and golden plovers and ducks such as wigeon, was showing a lot of unnibbled grass. Bewick’s swans were also in fairly low numbers. As usual, there was still plenty of interest though, including two water rails together and four cranes. Barnacle geese could be seen way out on the estuary shore, together with an escaped bar-headed goose.
Nearer to home, goosanders have been seen at their regular haunts of the Cutt Mill ponds and Moor Green Lakes, black-necked grebes could be found at Staines Reservoirs and goldeneyes were around in low numbers, notably at Thorpe Park which had three pairs. Up to three bitterns were at WWT Barnes, together with a couple of water pipits, at least one jack snipe and several common snipe. Firecrests and goldcrests were at WWT Arundel, together with a few bullfinches and the usual kingfishers.
Winter thrushes were around but in lower numbers than usual, especially fieldfares. Redpolls were largely absent after a brief appearance early in the winter, while siskins were few and far between. My garden has played host to most of the usual winter visitors but in lower numbers than normal.
A couple of exotics have included a long-staying black-throated thrush at Whipsnade Zoo (no doubt boosting their out of season takings considerably) and long-tailed ducks at Staines Reservoir and Blashford Lakes.
As I write this in early February there are some parts of Britain that have yet to see a frost in 2020, including Kirkwall in Orkney. This, of course, could all change with at least another six weeks of winter to go but it will need to be a dramatic change to encourage birds to abandon the EU for post-Brexit Britain this late in the season.
