New Year Bird Walk, Papercourt, 14 January 2007

The venue for our annual New Year bird walk was again the Papercourt area, which has proved an excellent venue in the past. After a week of high wind and heavy rain, we were relieved and pleased that the weather was mild, bright and warm for the time of the year.
 

Nine members gathered at the car park near Newark Abbey. We followed our usual route, first scanning the meadows on the east side of the road where we saw many winter thrushes. There were also jackdaws, crows, magpies, woodpigeons and starlings, and three Egyptian geese. We then followed the river as far as Papercourt Lock and searched the meadows on either side. To the north we saw a stonechat and deer, and to the south winter thrushes, pied wagtails, many black-headed gulls and a few lesser black-backed gulls and lapwings. However, the sighting of the day was by David Taylor - a little owl sitting low down on a fallen log. Just before reaching the farm we had good views of a circling sparrow hawk and soon after a distant kestrel.

The small lake at Papercourt is always good for ducks and we had good views of gadwall, shoveller, tufted duck, and a single male pochard. The main lake had coot, mallard, great crested grebe and little grebe. On the way back we saw house sparrows and a mistle thrush. In all we saw or heard 45 species (listed below). Winter visitor numbers were quite low and we saw no siskins. The weather has been so mild they just have not come this far south so far.

Species list

Chris Brading