Army Ornithological SocietySPTA West
The Plain in the west has been out of bounds for a couple of weeks due to an exercise. The weather has not been great either and yesterday I did not join the other 21,000 partygoers at Stonehenge as the sun would not be seen; too much cloud. Ringing on the Centre did not take place this morning due to strong winds and rain. I did get onto the West yesterday for a long morning helping out the Phd student investigating Whinchats. First task was to locate a new nest as the previous nest had been predated. There are plenty of badgers and foxes on the Plain but she did not know what had predated the eggs. Anyway we found the new nest which had 6 eggs in it. The next task was ringing 5 chicks at another site and then recording the activity of the parents over the following hour. I did notice that the male did a lot of sitting on a high point by the nest whilst the female looked for food. It is quite an appealing activity however I am not sure that Domestic Chief of Staff will feel the same way. We then set up a camera at another nest still with eggs to see if a predator will come along. Afterwards it was then a bug survey using 2 transects on a square where there were no Whinchats. Every 100m we recorded sward height and what came out of the sweep net. There were large numbers of caterpillars and Chafer Beetles as well as flies, ants, aphids and beetles of different sizes. Though the West had restricted access there was no restriction on the East. I met the two Richards from Surrey at a Tank Crossing to see Montagu's Harrier that was nesting nearby. All was quiet until tall Richard called Great Bustard. The bird flew in front of us landing in the grass near the harrier breeding site. The Range Warden who was also there called the Great Bustard Project so that a member of the team could establish its identity. It seems that this bird had been previously sighted in the east as far as the M25. After taking some long range photos we went to look for other birds and on a scrape found a Stone Curlew with chick besides Lapwings and Stock Doves. No Quail was heard nor a Whinchat seen though I did find one not too far away as I went home. Anyway after we had looked at other sites we went back to the harrier site in time to see the birds do a food pass on the wing. That was an excellent way to end some bird watching on the eastern end of the Plain.
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