Please feel free to record any of your interesting sightings from visits to the Trap Grounds below.
Header photograph credit Nicola Devine
949 entries.
Lots going on in the Reed bed this morning. Reed Warbler singing, female Reed Bunting exploring, Muntjac calling loudly and repeatedly from the Southernmost end.
Good news – for the past three - four days we have been hearing a song thrush singing daily in the Trap Grounds / canal side area early morning and evening and during the day. 🙂
A Long-tailed Tit prospecting for a nest in the willows along the stream.
heard a song thrush today along the Trap Grounds towpath! First one for ages! Maybe one is moving in to this territory after all...
a jay; a pair of blackbirds then 2 males chasing each other; various wrens singing very lustily; a heron causing mayhem in the reedbed – sounds of alarmed moorhens; robins; a big bumblebee; blue tits; chiffchaffs calling; jackdaws; a greenfinch; wood pigeons; pair of mallards swimming; 3 mallards careering around in the air chasing each other – the female landed suddenly on the path right in front of us – she looked as surprised as we did!
All I can add to Julie's very comprehensive list (below) is a Treecreeper, seen today investigating tree trunks and tree stumps along the boardwalk, presumably looking for a good nesting site.
Today around noon in the bright sunshine: grey sparrow hawk zooming along the stream and over to the Frenchay Rd wildlife corridor/course of the stream-bed; jay; heard Cetti's warbler 3 times; seen &/or heard: wrens, blue tits, long tailed tits, robins, chiffchaffs great tits, jackdaws, chaffinch, m blackbird; pair swans; heron high up in willow over reedbed, pair mallards, pair moorhens, pair dunnocks, 2 or 3 wood pigeons; orange-tip, 3 brimstones; tiny pinkish baby slowworm looking a bit like a slim earthworm; various bees; grey squirrel; bee-fly hovering. Masses of birdsong, but no sight or sound of song thrush – not heard one for at least three weeks along the stretch of the canal by TG / or in TG. (Until last year, 2024, we always heard song thrushes early morning and late dusk every day in Spring to end of summer and often well beyond too. We now never find the previously common signs of cracked and empty snail shells in our canal-side garden opposite the TG. Ditto no sign or sound – for months – of the flock of house sparrows, or of any individual house sparrows, that populated the thicket of bramble that used to grow at the entrance to the TG.)
Correction to my previous entry after looking more closely at my(fuzzy) photo of the beast, not the more common Red Mason Bee, but rather a female Red Tailed Mason Bee Osmia bicolor.
Rather off their normal patch of chalk and limestone, but pretty positive about the identification. Rather cutely, Red Tailed Mason Bees build their nests in old snail shells!
Queen Red Tailed Bumblebee and female Red Mason Bee.
Blackcap singing. Not quite in full song yet, but nice to have them back for the summer.
Saw a pair of Jack Snipe in the reedbed on 25 March
I watched last year's residents swans mating in the big pond yesterday (13 March); a perfectly synchronised sequence of silent dance moves ended in a very noisy act of copulation, after which they mooched off to investigate potential nest sites in the reedbed. Moving on, I watched a pair of flamboyant Jays prospecting for a nest site in the woodland near Heron Pond. Last week Tony Hollander saw a pair of Teal swimming in the big pond.
Song thrush singing loud and lustily this afternoon, 19 Feb. Pair of swans on lake by boardwalk. A pair of jays. Various tits. Chaffinch call recorded in TG on Merlin app, then I saw a pair in the stream area off Frenchay Rd. I found a dead shrew on woodland path near hide Sunday 16 Feb. Couldn't tell if it was a water shrew or the land type.
An evening stroll, managed to video a large water shrew for some time before it eventually saw me and dived into hiding. Also heard song thrushes (J. Dyson - you’ll be pleased to know they’ve not gone!)
Cormorant spotted today at 11am flying low over Port Meadow coming from the direction of Trap Grounds.
A single cormorant swimming then upending to dive and move underwater for yards (underwater for at least 20 seconds on each dive) just south of the Walton Well bridge
2nd January 2025
Twenty minutes in the TG: Noon today, misty, moist, cold around 6-7 degrees: 1 x f adult swan on lake , then 3 x cygnets appeared from reedbed & proceeded to do flapping / flying practice around the lake; 1 x jay, 1 x wren, 1 x moorhen, 1 x Robin, 2 or 3 x blackbird (m & f), 3 x magpies, several wood pigeons, roosting in trees, 1 x greater spotted woodpecker on tree by central reedbed; 2 x great-tits, 1 x bluetit, one loud rich 'juicy' call from centre of reedbed – sounded very much like a Cetti's warbler. But it didn't call again, so hard to tell. But one species is noticeable by its absence over the last several (five to six-plus) months: I have neither seen nor heard any songthrushes, neither in the Trap Grounds nor in Hayfield Rd garden by canal opposite TG. This is the first year since 2009 that I have not seen and heard songthrushes. Worrying. But last week I followed a diving, fishing cormorant as it progressed northwards up the canal from next to the TG. The rivers were very brown and high and fast-flowing last week – so maybe easier fishing in the canal?
Oxford University student Alessandro Nota has reported finding 17 species of snail in the Trap Grounds, including three which have hitherto been unrecorded here: Ashfordia granulata, Clausilia bidentata, and Merdigera obscura.
Today (4 November 2024) Phil Barnett reported seeing a bullfinch and a kingfisher .... hearing a water rail and a Cetti's Warbler ... and seeing 7 snipe and 30 golden plover flying overhead.
Phil Barnett heard two Water Rails calling from the reedbed today. And another Cetti's Warbler.