First Whimbrel

I was pleased to see an unfledged common tern chick still on one of the rafts when I opened the Ivy South hide, the last pair had two the other day, but I had thought they had both been lost. Rather closer to the hide was a grass snake on the tree trunk in the water below the hide, although they have been regular there, it seems less so than last year when up to four could be seen.

The moth trap was busy, but unremarkable, a silver Y and a diamond-backed moth showed that there are still migrants about and a very fresh privet hawk was a good one for the school group, there was also a Stigmella sp., probably spinosa. The significance of these is that privet hawk is the largest resident moth in Britain and the Stigmella are just about the smallest, their larvae feed by mining the mid-layer out of a leaf, privet hawk larvae will eat the whole bush!

I was ragworting again for much of the day, or so it felt, despite this I did see a juvenile cuckoo near the Tern hide and on one of the islands in Ibsley Water a whimbrel, the first of the autumn and 2 black-tailed godwit. I also got the mute swan count up a bit on yesterday, with 215 today along with the single black swan. Reports includes 2 juvenile redstart near the Goosander hide, always a favourite spot and a couple of Mediterranean gull.

Something Fishy Going On

The main event today was the start, at last, of the project to remove some of the common carp from Mockbeggar Lake. You might reasonably ask why anyone would want to remove them, the reason is that there are so many that they have eliminated all the weed and stirred up so much silt that the water is like soup. Unfortunately carp can build up to such numbers that they alter the whole lake ecosystem. So it was decided that as many as could be removed should be. That was some two or more years ago, since when negotiations to get to the point of actually doing the work had staggered along. The fish were removed using electro-fishing, that is stunning the fish with an electric charge so that they can be caught using a net, the fish are unharmed. Having got started the work continued rapidly and the fish proved easy to catch in good numbers, although that probably just shows how many of them there are.
Each big bucketful of fish contained about 100lb of fish each one weighing mostly between 8 and 12 lbs.

Once removed into aerated tanks they will be taken off to be used to stock lakes elsewhere, although we do not want them there are people elsewhere who do.

Of course it will be impossible to remove all the fish and with so many more resources it is likely that the remaining fish will grow larger and when they breed their off-spring will have the chance to survive, denied for so many years by competition. This makes it likely that the whole process will start all over again in a few years, but at least we might buy some time to try and put a more effective management plan in place.

If nothing else it was good to finally see a real start being made on the management of this lake, which was once one of the best in the whole complex for wildfowl.

As a result of fish related activity in the morning and a meeting of the Blashford Lakes Forum in the afternoon I saw rather little wildlife today. A pair of cuckoo over Mockbeggar and a sky generally scattered with swift was about the sum of it. Reports received amounted 2 hobby and not much else.

Cuckoo

Once again today was relatively quiet, with not many visitors and few new birds about. There are still not more than 5 common tern about, but at least one had found the rafts by the end of the day. Opening up the hides yesterday's garden warbler was still singing away near the Ivy South hide and I got one picture of it in full song. Before the tern found the rafts they had already been occupied by black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls. The latter included a colour-ringed female, I have not yet checked back but I am pretty sure it it the same one that was there last year and the year before and had been ringed as a nestling in the West Country.

Out and about I did hear my first cuckoo of the year, whilst on the screen in the Centre I saw my first palmate newt of the year via "Pondcam".