23rd May 2012
Brickfields L.N.R
Let’s start in April, was Spring cancelled due to rain? Well records were broken, the wettest April for a hundred years so they say!  109.5mm which is just over 4 ¼ inches to old codgers like me.  I took a couple of photo’s of the pond (April 30th) well that’s the most water I have seen in the pond, even the Newt wood carving has its tail in the water, this is  just what the sculptor had in mind, the Newt just coming out of the water onto dry land!  nice touch. It was difficult to walk around the reserve, definitely welly boots, if you go off the paths. A lot of the ground water had gathered off the paths, which had been just a walk through in early March. Well it was originally marsh land any way. Spring migrants were slow coming in, but did arrive in small numbers, over a longer period of time, the Chiffchaffs, Common Whitethroat, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps, more and more Blackcaps are ‘over wintering’ in this country, but I don’t recall hearing or seeing any Blackcaps wintering at Brickfields in the last five years. I have not heard a Cuckoo this year  over Brickfields. Unless you have?
Managed to take a picture of a Common Whitethroat (May 4th).