Sightings

Grey Wagtail bobbing and pecking its way along the muddy edges of the Mill Stream where the water level is now so low that it is providing an excellent dining experience for wagtails! Juvenile Moorhens racing over the exposed mud to the cover of the reedbed. A pair of Small Whites fluttering and mating. A dusky brown butterfly – possibly a Ringlet. Hops in full fruiting along the Frenchay Road perimeter. Blackberries dried and shrivelled. Enormous prehistoric-feeling Butterbur leaves blocking the old path to the hide, starting to curl at the edges: autumn coming.

[sighted 16th August 2025] Jersey Tiger Moth - along track to Allotments car park

A song thrush, foraging in the undergrowth near the canal. Good to see, at this more bird-silent time of the year, that they’re still around 🙂 Loads of bees of various species on the purple loosestrife in Dragonfly Pond & elsewhere - the flower spikes have been literally humming with bees this week

Re J. Dyson's submission earlier today (below): I watched the moorhen working ceaselessly on 23rd and 24th July to build that nest on the west bank of Swan Pond. It seems very late in the season to be breeding, but perhaps an earlier brood of chicks failed to survive?

Two Lesser Burdocks (?) flowering pinkly at TG entrance. I haven't noticed these here before. A much smaller plant than the big burdocks that are more common in this area, with smaller, pinker flowers, about 1.5cm across, appearing individually rather than in clusters like the bigger burdock. Nine ladybirds on hogweed. On the oregano flowers a plethora of happily buzzing, feeding insects: at least a dozen gatekeepers, three ringlets, some ladybirds and many small bumble bees, a honey bee, a hover fly; and nearby two slow worms – a tiny youngster and an adult.

On the latest Bat Walk led by Suzanne and Donald Dalton on 14 July, detector devices helped us to identify several previously recorded species (Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Nathusius' Pipistrelle, Noctule, Daubenton's, and Barbastelle), but we also saw and heard Greater Horseshoe and Lesser Horseshoe bats (both of them new sightings), zooming around the ponds at the southern end of the boardwalk. Both species are now rare in Britain, their numbers having declined by more than 90 per cent in the past 100 years, largely due to the use of pesticides, which has reduced the availability of the insects on which they feed.

kingfisher today fishing on the lake

On our BAT WALK, led by Suzanne and Donald Dalton on 12 June, we identified at least one of each of these species or sub-species: Noctule, Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Nathusius' Pipistrelle (a first), and a Daubenton's; sadly there was no sign of a Barbastelle this year. The Nathusius' Pipistrelle is a rarity, but the Trap Grounds reserve offers the ideal habitat for its foraging needs: freshwater ponds, marshland, a nearby canal, and woodland rides.

Twenty-five years ago a dozen pairs of Reed Warblers were ringed in the Trap Grounds reedbed -- the largest colony within the city boundary. But conditions on site gradually deteriorated: the water level dropped as scrub willows invaded the site and dead reeds built up. In 2017 we began eradicating the willows, and scything blocks of reeds on an annual rotational basis, and gradually the health of the reedbed has been restored -- as testified on 31 May this year, when members of the Oxford Bird-Ringing Group caught 21 birds in two mist nets. Nine of the birds were Reed Warblers, seven of which were males in breeding condition. This suggests that there could be at least seven breeding pairs in the Trap Grounds. The group members also ringed the elusive Cetti’s Warbler, but it was not in breeding condition, so they deduced that it was probably a male that has failed to attract a mate.