Sightings 9/3/11

Our first spring migrants today: Wheatears at the coast,a Ring Ouzel at Failand and 2 Swallows at Clevedon.


BRISTOL:
Brentry: at Charlton Common this morning, 1 female Sparrowhawk, a singing Skylark, 20 Fieldfare and 3 Blackcap (A Devine).

Snuff Mills: a Grey Wagtail, Dipper, Raven and Treecreeper this afternoon (P Baber).

BRADLEY STOKE:
26 Waxwing at the usual Aldi store/pub/roundabout 5.15pm (D Reeves).

SEVERNSIDE:
New Passage: little change: the Barnacle Goose, 53 Shelduck, 100 Wigeon, 40 Teal, 35 Redshank, 50 Turnstones and a Green Woodpecker gardening in the sheep-fields (per severnsidebirds).

Severn Beach:

9.3.11 Wheatear this morning © Rod Holbrook, many thanks
at the seawall, opposite the shops

FAILAND:
At the BGS playing fields: 1 Green Woodpecker, 7 Redwing and a Nuthatch of note (A Rhodes).

At the Sandy Lane/Common Lane junction, a Ring Ouzel in an orchard 5.45pm this evening (per CJ Stone).

If ratified, the earliest ever Avon date (previous 15/3/67) though there has been some earlier records which are believed to refer to over-wintering birds.


PORTBURY DOCK:
Just 200 Dunlin and 2 Great Black-backed Gull of note this morning (S Hale).

CLEVEDON COAST:
2 Wheatear at Blake's pools this morning (A Middleton).

In the town, 2 Swallows over the house (T Pike per E Drewitt).

BREAN DOWN:
Large gull movements to west again, 1,000 Herring Gull and 400 Lesser Black-backed Gull of note (per westonbirds).

WENDY:
Several (male) members of the Club have contacted us to ask who Wendy is.

We're sorry to disappoint but Wendy is the name we have given to our spreadsheet where we record all the club's bird sightings which come into us from members and other sources.

As it's a bit quiet bird-wise at the moment, we though we'd post a picture of her and say a few words about the bird recording process.

WENDY
Her vital statistics change each month
(shown here just a tiny fraction of our January Waxwing records)

All the bird sightings you send us, by whatever means, are put onto Wendy. She is in this format because it matches up with the spreadsheet format used by the Avon Bird Report guys.

Most of our records come in to us electronically now 'on the day' which is a great help as we can update Wendy on a day by day basis without any mad end of month rush.

At the end of the month, we use Wendy as the data source to write Bird News. After we have written Bird News, we send Wendy to the ABR guys and then we start a new Wendy for the new month.......and so on.

So, that's one mystery cleared up!

Later this week, if it's still quiet, we'll let members in on the secret on how the Sightings Page team manages to take such awesomely stunning photographs....