Chris Farthing’s Woodberry bird highlights: March 2024

After the quiet and settled months of a mild winter, March is the month when things start to change. Short-distant migrants are already starting to arrive at the start of the month, and before the end of the month we are usually starting to see a few long distance migrants, arriving here after a long flight from sub-Saharan Africa.

The highlight of March wasn’t an arriving migrant but a departing one. Siskins (below) overwinter in the UK in good numbers but mostly move on at the start of spring to their breeding grounds. This movement saw a lot of birds arriving in London this year as an event which was presumably weather-related caused them to stop off here. They have been heard here in the past migrating over in autumn, but there are very few previous records of them actually landing here. This year was different though, firstly on the 9^th, a single male was found feeding in a small alder between the reservoir and the New River. Over the next eighteen days there were plenty more sightings, never more than two birds at a time, but at least four birds must have been involved because two females and two males were seen.

a bright yellow bird with black banding on its tail clung to a branch with tiny brown cones — Siskin

Photo credit: Chris Farthing

The first arrivals of the spring migration period were chiffchaffs and blackcaps. A few chiffchaffs do overwinter here, and we get the occasional sighting of blackcap in winter here too as they overwinter in the general area but not actually on site. As March goes on the amount of song from these two warblers increased markedly and by the end of the month there were probably not far off ten of each here.

The first long-distance migrant we see is usually a sand martin, but this year it was beaten by an early willow warbler (below) on the 21^st. More birds followed and two or three could be heard singing on some days late in the month.

a bright yellow bird with black banding on its tail clung to a branch — Willow warbler

Photo credit: Chris Farthing

We generally don’t see little egrets here in winter but they can start visiting in spring depending on what the water level is like. The first of the year was seen on March 21^st when there was a bit of mud around the edges of the reservoir. Greylag geese are surprisingly uncommon here but during March we did have regular flyovers, usually of a pair of birds, and they sometimes landed on the water too.

Teal and shoveler are our two winter-only ducks. We started the month with around ten of each and the shoveler appeared to be all gone at the end of the month. Just one pair of teal remained. Kingfisher (below) is also a winter-only species here, and we were getting regular visits from a female up to the middle of March, but she has now moved on and will hopefully now be half of a breeding pair.