17-20 March update

A fairly steady weekend, the clear highlight of which was my earliest ever Willow Warbler - a male in song on the boundary of the WWT on Saturday morning. Also new for me this year was a flyover Siskin. I had my second Wheatear of the year, another male, on 19th while other highlights at the WWT over the weekend included lingering Water Pipit, Jack Snipe and Pintail. I had at least one sighting of Peregrine and the drake Tufted Duck x Pochard performed particularly well on Sunday. Gulls were pretty unremarkable over the weekend.

The usual drake Tufted Duck x Pochard hybrid

Away from the WWT, the Yellow-legged Gull made appearances at Chiswick Eyot on Friday and Sunday, and I had a drake Mandarin fly over Lonsdale Road Reservoir on Saturday morning. Small gull numbers have really dropped off (to virtually zero) along the river, but large gulls remain fairly steady.

The regular 2cy Yellow-legged Gull at Chiswick Eyot

New paper in Dutch Birding

Our exhaustive paper covering the birds of European Russia has now been published in the excellent Dutch Birding. It details locations for all the region's key birds and is up to date with all 2015 sightings. Many thanks to Felix Timmermann, Radoslaw Gwóźdź, Rami Mizrachi, Janne Aalto, Paul French and many others for their valuable contributions.

Jones J, Monticelli D, & Crochet, P-A (2015) Birding in European Russia: Ural mountains, Yekaterinburg and Orenburg region. Dutch Birding 37 (5): 302-320