Great Spotted Woodpecker and Reed Warbler new for the year

Predated Mallard and Moorhen eggs, Bow Creek Ecology Park, April 2012

The unsettled weather continues, putting the kibosh on lots of migrants, chief amongst them Sand Martin which is now so late that it may not turn up at all this spring; Gary has still not had Chiffchaff although Paul and me had a silent bird this morning in the copse it would not perform later when Gary arrived. We headed for the ecology park where beneath the palimpsest of Blackcap song I picked up the first Reed Warbler of the year jagging quietly to itself at the back of the feeder pond reedbed, so another trans-Saharan migrant has made it back to the lower Lea. Back at the basin Paul picked up a male Great Spotted Woodpecker in the copse; an unusual time of the year to get one, but the second bird in three days as the bird in the week seen by Gary and John was a female. We've been seeing quite a lot of predated waterfowl eggs lately, most with a roughly round hole in the side; I don't think the culprit is a Brown Rat or Grey Squirrel, I did in one fanciful moment consider Otter but I have an idea that the villain may be a Mink, but more research is needed. The rest of today's haul included a single Greylag Goose at Bow Creek, six Shelduck with lots of courtship behaviour going on, 42 Tufted Duck but neither of the Portuguese birds, a Kestrel hunting over the ecology park, seven Common Sandpipers in the high tide roost,  four Common Terns, two Stock Doves, at least five Blackcaps including three singing males and two pairs of Linnets.