This weekend was the annual B.O.S. Long Day Count. I didn't think I'd be able to do it this year, but it turned out my plans for today changed and as a bonus Clive was around to help me. It was a good job really as it was a really tough day and we only completed 11 hours, but if I was on my own I probably would have given up quite while before that! I think the heat had big impact on the behaviour of the birds and us as observers, and most of the expected migrants were well on their way north or so high in the sky we couldn't see them.
Naturally, we started at Grimsbury where we manged to see the bulk of our birds and picked up a few things of note for here. We had a Mistle Thrush singing away to the west near the canal, a Greylag Goose fly over, a single Swallow at the Borrow Pit and two later at the reservoir (our only ones of the day...), four Lapwings over the Borrow Pit (which unfortunately was probably our most interesting sighting of the day!) and a Reed Warbler back on territory along the river.
We didn't pick up anything of real note at all, although we did choose to avoid some sites with long walks due to heat and general exhaustion. We only had Dunnock at about midday (!) so that is a good example of how bad it was. A few other people noted a lack of House Martins and Swifts the day before and we only saw two to four House Martins over Wroxton and one Swift over Shotteswell, that was it.
We ended on 63 species, so nine under par. Hopefully next year is a really good one.
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