Saturday 19 October 2013

come on in 84 your time is up.

Yep after weeks and weeks finally I managed to find the no 84 for the patch this year. It came on Thursday when I flushed  a Snipe from pasture , a nice way to get to 84 species so far this year . The rest of the week has been really quiet , with the weather becoming very mild and with southerly winds it has felt more like Spring than Autumn. The birds have reflected this with no Winter Thrushes at all and just the highlites being a calling Tawny Owl ,a couple of Ravens and a good number of Skylarks on Thursday with 40 plus being present.
So when I went out on Saturday morning I was not expecting to get much in return.
So the first bird was a Raven which called as it passed north. It soon became obvious that Skylarks were moving and in the end 45 plus passed over or were on pasture, that being said only I could only muster 9  Meadow Pipits a poor total. Pied Wagtail were about with 12 in various places but I could not turn any of them into White ,shame really.
A couple of nice sightings this morning were a Wheatear on a dung hill ,getting rather late now and a male Reed Bunting in a hedgerow another migrant . A small flock of 20 pus Linnet were on stubble and it was then that I noticed a small trickle of Starling passing south in the end about 100 plus were counted ,with them 5 Redwing passed over and 4 Fieldfare called as they did likewise. As I was near home a flock of 25 Fieldfare dropped onto pasture great to see ,I have a real passion for our winter Thrushes after seeing them in their summer home last year when I visited northern Finland last year.
4 Mistle Thrush were about and a small flock of 3 Bullfinch  passed over .
The best of the rest were Kestrel, Buzzard, 2 Greater Spotted Woodpecker, 4 Stock Dove and a couple of flyover Song Thrush.