For people who don't know Brough Park, it is an urban park on the outskirts of the market town of Leek. It a sloping site with large areas of mown grass, a lake, mature trees and shrubs, tarmacked paths and a bandstand; and, of course it is usually busy with people.
Judging by these results the lake was an important resource for water-dependent birds during March 2013. As we all know, March was unseasonably cold. According to my weather records we had twenty days which started with frost, and on many of these days pools and lakes were frozen completely or partly for most of the day. The volunteer who recorded these observations said that the lake at Brough Park retained areas of open water - at least on the days he visited. This, plus the inclination of the public to feed ducks etc. in parks, probably resulted in Brough Park being an attractive site for Mallards and Black-Headed Gulls during the inclement weather. You will see from this table that on one day 50 gulls were at Brough Park and on another day 41 Mallards were present (on the two other survey days there 16 and 20 Black-Headed Gulls and 36 and 40 Mallards - the first survey day only species were ticked as present, numbers were not counted).
The lake in Brough park.
The next most frequent species was Wood Pigeon at a maximum of 13 individuals counted on one day. And, if we add to the Wood Pigeons the (maximum count of) 7 for the closely related Feral Pigeon/Rock Dove, we have 20 pigeons in total. No one will be surprised that there are a lot of pigeons in an urban park. Wood and Feral Pigeons, along with the previously mentioned Black-Headed Gulls, will eat pretty much anything, and they are especially adept at scavenging for scraps left behind by humans.
Just for the record, in a recent paper published in British Birds journal, Wood Pigeon is the fourth most abundant bird species during the breeding season in the UK. There are estimated to be 5,400,000 Wood Pigeons resident in the UK at any one time. There are about 231 breeding bird species in the UK. The most abundant species is thought to be the Wren at 8,6000,000.
Look at the table below and you will see that there was a total of 23 species recorded in March in Brough Park.
| Barn owl | Magpie | 3 | |
| Black-headed gull | 50 | Mallard | 41 |
| Blackbird | 8 | Mandarin Duck | |
| Blackcap | Marsh Tit | ||
| Blue tit | Meadow Pipit | ||
| Brambling | Merlin | ||
| Bullfinch | Mistle thrush | 1 | |
| Buzzard | Moorhen | 1 | |
| Canada Goose | Mute swan | ||
| Carrion Crow | 4 | Nuthatch | 5 |
| Chaffinch | 7 | Oyster Catcher | |
| Chiff Chaff | Peregrine | ||
| Coal Tit | 1 | Pheasant | |
| Collared Dove | Pied Flycatcher | ||
| Common Gull | Pied Wagtail | ||
| Common Sandpiper | Pochard | ||
| Coot | 1 | Raven | |
| Cormorant | Red Grouse | ||
| Crossbill | Red-legged Partridge | ||
| Cuckoo | Redshank | ||
| Curlew | Redstart | ||
| Dipper | Redwing | ||
| Dunlin | Reed Bunting | ||
| Dunnock | Reed Warbler | ||
| Fieldfare | Ringed Plover | ||
| Gadwall | Robin | 3 | |
| Garden Warbler | Rock dove/feral pigeon | 7 | |
| Garganey | Rook | 4 | |
| Goldcrest | 1 | Sedge Warbler | |
| Goldfinch | Short-eared Owl | ||
| Goosander | Shoveler | ||
| Goshawk | Siskin | 4 | |
| Great black backed Gull | Skylark | ||
| Great Crested Grebe | Snipe | ||
| Great Spotted Woodpecker | 1 | Song Thrush | 1 |
| Great Tit | 8 | Sparrowhawk | 1 |
| Green Woodpecker | Spotted Flycatcher | ||
| Greenfinch | Starling | ||
| Grey Heron | Stock Dove | ||
| Grey Partridge | Stonechat | ||
| Grey Wagtail | Swallow | ||
| Greylag Goose | Swift | ||
| Herring Gull | Tawny Owl | ||
| House Martin | Teal | ||
| House Sparrow | Tree Creeper | ||
| Jackdaw | 8 | Tree Pipit | |
| Jay | Tree Sparrow | ||
| Kestrel | Tufted Duck | ||
| Kingfisher | Water Rail | ||
| Lapwing | Waxwing | ||
| Lesser black backed Gull | Wheatear | ||
| Lesser Redpoll | Whitethroat | ||
| Lesser Spotted Woodpecker | Wigeon | ||
| Lesser Whitethroat | Willow Tit | ||
| Linnet | Willow Warbler | ||
| Little Grebe | Woodpigeon | 13 | |
| Little Owl | Wood Warbler | ||
| Long-eared Owl | Woodcock | ||
| Long-tailed Tit | 2 | Wren | 1 |
| Magpie | 3 | Yellow Wagtail | |
| Yellowhammer | |||
| TOTAL NUMBER OF SPECIES SEEN AT BOUGH PARK DURING MARCH → | 23 | ||
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