New Year bird walk, West End Common, 11 January 2009

The only previous time that we have tried this common for our bird walk was in 2004. After several days of miserable weather we were lucky to have bright skies, sunshine and only a light breeze, although quite cool. Nine members gathered at the West End Lane car park. As we put on our boots a robin sang, a dunnock briefly sat on the fence and blue tits flitted through the trees. As we walked across the open area towards the ledges we had an excellent view of a young kestrel perched in a tree.

The woods were a little disappointing with only a few tits, a magpie and some jackdaws recorded. We had hoped to see bramblings amongst the beech mast but it was very quiet and there were not even flocks of chaffinches, which are usually quite common. We descended the steps to the River Mole and walked back along the bank. There was a pair of mallards on the river and some coots on the pond across the river on the golf course. A kingfisher flew down the river in a flash of blue but we did not all see it and of course it did not return.

We walked back towards Garsons Farm and added long-tailed tits, nuthatch and house sparrow to our list. We walked over to the West End pond, which was crowded with birds but mostly mallard, Canada geese, black-headed gulls, and moorhens. The walk back to the cars did not produce any additions. The list of sightings was rather disappointing but we were probably a bit late in the day and the birds had finished feeding. However it was a very pleasant walk and good to meet up with the group for our first outing of the year.

In all we saw 30 different species:

Chris Brading