Purple peril

I failed to see anything of note today (although I could've tried harder - I watched a lot of Olympics!). However, things are looking more promising at both Collingham and Mons Pool, with water levels down and more marginal areas available (helped by a couple of pumps at the former site). However, no decent waders today, although a check of the sightings book at Mons Pool revealed that there have been a few Green and Common Sands in the area over the last week, with a Greenshank at Mons Pool on wednesday.

At Langford, I couldn't do better than 4 Snipe in flight over Phase 2, but there were loads of Roesel's Bush-crickets buzzing from the longs grass around the silt lagoons - they were first recorded here in 2007.

I then occupied myself by pulling some Himalayan Balsam from the Fleet where it passes the wood;  Himalayan Balsam is bad news (see here), and is prevalent on several river catchments in the county - especially in the west. It is a problem further downstream on the Fleet in Collingham, but it hadn't been recorded this far up until I spotted ithere  a couple of weeks ago. I pulled some of it then, but knew I'd missed some. Hopefully I've got it all now and it wont become established here...

Himalayan Balsam on the Fleet at Langford