No waders other than Lapwing, numerous larger gulls loafing on the shingle island, Kingfisher called and was seen briefly along the Loddon, no sign of any Oystercatcher chicks on Sandford.
Checking on previous Julys, Wigeon is quite rare with just 3 previous records, todays little flock being the largest first return group so far, no records for this month before 2002, so we are witnessing a fairly new trend:
1/6th July onwards 2002
2/15th July onwards 2005
6/14th July 2008
LFGP now holds the bulk of the wintering population of Wigeon and we get late stayers into May, but it is still Sandford that often acts as the 'Arivals' lounge for many of our early returning and passing ducks, when sailing is on, all the ducks mingle in together and make it hard to check them, plus they go into Eclipse.
As autumn gets under way and the now larger flocks of the Wigeon and Gadwall disperse to WSL, LFGP and BSL. At LFGP Wigeon have now become accustomed to it being safe to graze the landfill area, so numbers there have gone up from an average of 200, to about 350-400, but in December 2010, a large flock began gathering due to the total freeze up of all the other local lakes, pushing all the Wigeon to LFGP, 250/6th, then 375/9th, then a massive jump to 800/21st, peaking with 950-1000/28th, 850-900/30th.
In 2002 a flock of 71 Wigeon arrived on 18th September, in 2009 a flock of 83 arrived 15th September, both very high counts for the time of year. I'll go into recent Teal numbers another day!
Sandford has pulled Garganey again and again, they love the place in August, plus there are two long staying October and one even later November record, so just keep a keen eye on there all through to the winter!
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