Sunday 19 October 2014

warm weekend

What is going on with the weather ?  ,18 degrees at the nearly the end of October, some say its glorious I  say its a bit of a worry. As the rest of the birding world seems to be enjoying  an almost orgasmic October here on my little patch of no where it has been overall rather quiet .
Willow and I were out at around 7.30am ish on Saturday and it was almost T shirt weather, cloudy but very mild .
The most obvious thing was the overhead passage of Redwing over with a count of 200 plus over .but as yet no Fieldfares where are they ? they are running late this year . With the Redwings came 15 plus Blackbirds ,superb views of a Continental birds were had , the odd Song Thrush passed over . The last Thrush species seen were 2 Mistle Thrush that passed south . What I would give for a Ring Ouzel ? they have been every where this Autumn .
Other birds that passed over were 25 plus Linnet and a trickle of Goldfinches  with 16 plus straight over south . The usual Autumn migrants tried to make up the numbers with 45 plus Skylarks on pastures and passing over south and Pied Wagtails are still passing over 11 plus passing ,they all looked like Pied but maybe there may have been a White ,but the calls all sounded like Pied . 35 Meadow Pipits trickled through ,their main passage seems to be over for this Autumn , we will still have a few that will winter with us .
In the hedges Robins were decreased in number with just 7 today ,  maybe the winter have found their winter quarters .  A nice visitor was a Yellowhammer I heard calling as it passed over ,a  small population is around locally and we sometimes see them ,but not enough for me . For my Bullfinch fan I managed to pick up 2 birds in the hedges.  
On the raptor front 2 Buzzards and a female Kestrel were on offer and a couple of Ravens were the first for a short while.
The final 2 species worth a mention were a Green Woodpecker and a single Stock Dove . So a quiet period at the moment lets hope it picks up soon as I am getting jealous of what" s going on elsewhere.