Reed Warbler new for the year

The unseasonably warm weather that has been prevalent for most of the week made it to the weekend, however a dawn start beneath a cloudless sky was a reminder that this was early April and not mid June, it was cold enough for a scarf and gloves for the first hour or so until the sun had climbed high enough to dispel the overnight frost. Lea Valley Regional Park have finally taken some action on the silted-up basin by raising the sluices on the inner dock gates trapping the water from high-tide inside the basin, all three tern rafts now have water beneath them and the "island" really is an island again, the sluices are not completely watertight, but should do enough to retain sufficient water between high tides to make the basin an attractive prospect for Common Terns again after the worst breeding season on record in 2010. Migration is well under way now, at least six Blackcaps were singing throughout the patch and a single Reed Warbler was sub-singing from the ecology park reedbed, my earliest record here; a male Northern Wheatear was on the Pura Foods peninsula along with at least three Little Ringed Plovers, a fourth bird was on the island at the basin, and two Sand Martins were hawking midges, mainly over Bow Creek. Wildfowl included three Shelduck, nine Common Teal and 43 Tufted Duck; other odds and ends noted today were a male Peregrine on the Millennium Dome, two Common Sandpipers on Bow Creek, a silent but typical collybita Chiffchaff in the northern scrub, a male Chaffinch in the ecology park and finally a singing Reed Bunting in the pylon reedbed.