New Year Bird Walk - Wey Meadows, 9 January 2011

After experiencing so many cold, wet and miserable days it was a pleasure to be greeted with blue skies, excellent visibility and only a light breeze, ideal conditions for bird watching. Fourteen 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 three nuthatches and a treecreeper, long-tailed tits and great spotted woodpecker.  We crossed the green and walked through the houses to the Quadrant in order to pick up some garden birds.  We saw many jackdaws but not much else and even the house sparrows usually found here were neither heard nor seen.

From there we walked to the lock and along the river road.  There were mute swans and mallard on the river but not much else.  We hoped for siskins in the alders but none was seen.  We had good views of a male reed bunting feeding on the tops of the reeds.  The meadows are usually a good place to see Canada geese and winter thrushes but they were empty of all but a few magpies.  We crossed over the railway and walked along the river, again seeing very little.  The meadows have been restored after gravel extraction.  The new lake has been surrounded by a willow fence that has grown up and obscured the view.  Gravel extraction seems to be temporarily in abeyance but they have left an unrestored area with several small lakes where there were many birds including four species of gull, including a third-winter herring gull, lapwing, teal, tufted duck, moorhens and Canada geese.  The new lake just to the north of the railway is now obstructed by dense vegetation with very few gaps and was almost empty but for swans and a few gadwall.  We did however have a good view of siskins high in the canopy.

We crossed the railway to the old established pond where there were quite a lot of waterfowl, including gadwall, tufted duck, heron, great crested grebe, and two goosander.  After crossing the River Wey we walked back through the Dell, unfortunately doomed to housing development, to the Locke King estate and the station but saw very little more.  In all we saw 41 different species:

Chris Brading