Welcome

Welcome to my online diary of wildlife observations made on Leicester's finest urban reserve/wild patch, the Aylestone Meadows. I have been watching wildlife, particularly birds here for almost thirty years and have seen many changes, both positive and negative over the period. I felt, that as I'm out there at least once a day, I should write it all down and a blog seems the most beneficial technique to reach a wider audience. Once I've worked out a few technical problems with maps etc, the blog should improve.

I tend to divide the Aylestone Meadows into two sections, the "Northern", my home patch as it were, runs from Freeman's Weir south to Middleton Street and includes the boardwalk, the gas towers and the maturing plantations. The "Southern" section I regard as Middleton Street south to the back of Whetstone Tip and includes all the rough pasture between Packhorse Bridge, Fosse Park and the Tip Pools. I tend to do the "southern" bit less regularly and primarily during migration periods.

Today I walked around the "Northern" bit which initially appeared very quiet. There are still plenty of wintering thrushes, particularly Redwings roving about looking for berries. There are a few Fieldfares with them but I suspect the bulk of these are still around the Kings Lock area as they seem to prefer more windblown habitat. Blackbird numbers are still high and both Mistle and Song Thrushes are very evident at the moment. The Kingfishers have been showing well, particularly around the pebble beach area and the pools along the boardwalk and hopefully, with a mild winter will continue to do so. There are a couple of Jays, an unusual record for the Meadows, still knocking around the mature poplars along the edge of the boardwalk. There is a group of around 10 Reed Buntings which are often around the scrubby areas near the main car park, this is an unusually high number for the area at this time of year. The Willow Tits are still around and are particularly vocal at the moment as are both the Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers. If you are walking in the area, keep an eye out for the Buzzards which seem to be making daily flyovers all the way up to the Walkers Stadium. Bird of the day has to go to a superb drake Goosander, a wintering sawbilled duck which is currently looking for fish on the River Biam, close to the boardwalk.