Important sites for song thrush in Richmond

Platts Eyot The island known as Platts Eyot is in the western part of the borough abutting Elmbridge. Much of the island is occupied by light industry including boat repair workshops. The island was important for boatbuilding but now is quiet and wooded and inhabitated by song thrushes. The area is of regional importance for bats. Could all this be about to change? See local links page.	Crane Park Nature Reserve This is an important site for song thrushes as is the whole of the Crane River Corridor. One of our working group recorded 13 song thrush territories along there last year.
Songthrush anvils at small burial grounds We found song thrush anvils at Grove Chapel Cemetery and Kilmorey Mausoleum (photo). Song thrushes use the headstones at Grove Chapel Cemetery as anvils to break open snail shells. Volunteers at Kilmorey Mausoleum leave pieces of York stone around the site for breeding song thrushes to break open snail shells.	Songthrush anvils elsewhere There are iron railings along the boundary between Hampton Court Park and Barge Walk. The railings are set on concrete plinths every few metres. Each plinth is an anvil and is covered in snail shells (see photo). Along the riverside at Teddington an old asbestos sheet has been used by a song thrushes as it was found covered in almost 50 broken snail shells.
Programme of Walks East Sheen Cemetery walks 24.6.05 and 18.8.05. 9 and 11 people respectively convened for evening walks through East Sheen Cemetery. Our main objective was to survey for BAP species particularly the song thrush and afterwards wait for emerging bats.

On the first walk birds were still singing their territories and the first singing bird encountered was a song thrush next to the superintendents house with a further 4 territories heard. 3 juvenile green woodpeckers were seen perching on the same headstone with an adult calling from a nearby tree. Another family group of mistle thrushes took to nearby poplar trees when they saw an unexpected flock of people in their territory. Apart from aerial swifts the only migratory species noted was a black cap although it is late in the season for some migrants to be singing.

As it grew dark a tawny owl flew into a tree adjacent to Grove Road Chapel and quickly out again when it realised it was being observed. The highlight was two roding (male) woodcock associated with an offsite area possibly the common. In all twenty species, representing a wide cross section of the bird community, were observed in a short space of time.

Our first pipistrelle emerged 5 minutes before sunset indicating the proximity of the roost (although low light levels contributed to this early emergence). Noctules were seen feeding later but only in the old part of the cemetery (Richmond Cemetery) which held most of the bat interest. In addition 2 toads, rabbits and a fox were seen.

On our second walk the picture was different with fewer bird species. The only singing birds were the robins that were singing their autumn songs although we had hoots from the owl, yaffles from the green woodpeckers and rasping croaks from the jays. A juvenile song thrush balanced quietly in a tree allowing us to watch it for a few minutes in the fading light. Pipistrelles emerged much later from the Grove chapel nature reserve (12minutes after sunset) and no other bat species were observed.