New Year Bird Walk, Wey Meadows, 5 January 2008

For the last few years we have visited the Papercourt area for the New Year bird walk, but when selecting this year's venue, the foot and mouth outbreak had spread to the fields adjacent to the canal.  It was just as well that we did choose a new venue as the fields and canal path were still closed off on New Year's day.  The Wey Meadows used to be interesting but large-scale gravel extraction ruined large areas.  Recently large parts have been restored, however, and the wildlife is returning. 

Eleven members gathered at the Weybridge Station car park.  We walked down through the woods adjacent to Brooklands College where many of the common woodland birds were seen.  The best sightings were of two treecreepers, one of which was in view for a long time and gave everybody a chance of studying it, a nuthatch, a goldcrest and a great spotted woodpecker.  Another woodpecker flew over with its typical undulating flight and jizz.  It looked extremely small and it was probably a lesser spotted woodpecker but it did not land so we could not confirm its identity. 

We crossed the green and walked through the houses to the Quadrant in order to pick up some garden birds.  We saw starlings and house sparrows in good number.  Both species seem to have increased in numbers over the last two years.  (Somewhere here we lost Dick and Lynn.  We assumed they were behind us so went back to look for them without success.  They were in fact in front of us and we only met up again much later in the walk.) From there we walked to the lock and along the river road.  There were Canada geese on the meadows and mallard on the river but not much else.  We hoped for siskins in the alders but the only sighting was of three flying over. 

We crossed over the railway to the meadows that have been subject to gravel extraction over the last few years.  A new lake has been made in the re-established land but it had nothing on it.  However we did see a pair of stonechats hopping into the long grass and displaying on the fence posts.  Further on, in more recently reclaimed land, were redwings, almost invisible against the muddy background until they moved.  The new lake to the north of the railway was almost empty but in one corner was a male teal.  We crossed the railway to the old established pond where there were quite a lot of waterfowl, including wigeon, shoveller, gadwall, tufted duck and great crested grebe.  We lingered awhile here to count the actual numbers as we intend to add this lake as a supplement to the Brooklands Museum Survey.  It was here that we met up again with Dick and Lynn.  After crossing the River Wey we walked back through the woods to the Locke-King estate and the station but saw very little more.  In all we saw 42 different species:

Chris Brading

Postscript from Lynn: the reason Dick and I stopped was that we were intrigued by a pine with enormous cones, which we stopped to collect, and later identified as Jeffrey pine.  When we looked up the rest of the group had vanished!