23rd Oct 2022: Hawfinch!

Overnight from Tuesday into Wednesday the wind had finally switched direction causing a mass movement of birds from the continent! Locally we didn't see the epic numbers of thrushes recorded elsewhere, but I did see c.50 Redwing (one flock of 30 and singles/small groups), a single Fieldfare, a Dunlin flew in and around a few times but didn't land, a Stonechat in cattle field and a few each of Siskin, Skylarks and Meadow Pipit.

Thursday morning there was low cloud/fog/mizzle and obviously less birds moving. There was 2 Wigeon and 5 Teal amongst the ducks. Redwing and Song Thrush calls seemed to be coming from every bit of cover. Between myself, John and Mike P we had well over 200 Fieldfare over with a couple of flocks totalling 180. There was at least 3 Snipe but there may have been several. Mike saw 3 in flight together, but before that there were several other sightings where I'd seen 1 three times, John had seen 1 and 2 and Mike had seen 1. John also had male Stonechat (not yesterday's bird) in the cattle field.

 

Thursday morning I had also seen 3 ringed Black-headed Gulls. One with a white ring and black code EMK1 - confusingly this was NOT the same seen by John on the 27th July (that was EKM1 ! ), but I think it is from the same ringing scheme in the Netherlands. One with yellow ring and black code T2VM ringed in Poland near Plock. One with only metal ring seen as other leg tucked up and not visible.

Friday morning a Hawfinch flew over low north-west near the water treatment works. Picked up on calls and seen, but only briefly. Also heard by Iain Brown who I'd just been talking to nearby. Otherwise it was fairly quiet with small numbers of thrushes blogging around and singles of Lapwing, Lesser Redpoll and Siskin over. Mike P had a male Stonechat again and there was at least 3 Chiffchaff.

Polish ringed bird on the left and Dutch (?) ringed bird on the right

16th Oct 2022: Rock Pipit

On Tuesday morning I had our first Brambling of the autumn flyover west, a Siskin over and several Redwing around. Wednesday morning I had 2 Siskin over and another ringed Black-headed Gull (but couldn't get any details from the ring).

Friday morning was almost completely dead, except for a Rock Pipit that appeared on the western shore and stayed around for a few hours at least. Otherwise 3 Redwing and 1+ Siskin over.

Sunday morning John and I had a few bits fly over - Lesser Redpoll, minimum of 3 Siskin possibly a couple more and 2 Mistle Thrush but otherwise fairly standard.

Courtesy and copyright of Mike Pollard

9th Oct 2022: Firecrest

It's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks but on the 1st I had 2 Redpoll and a Yellow Wagtail fly over and heard our first Redwing of the autumn.
Then on the 7th John found a Firecrest along the western side near the water treatment works. This is the first site record since January 2003 I think. He also had 1 Redwing.
This morning John and I headed out and were pleasantly surprised with a pretty good birdy morning. We had 55 species in just over 3.5 hrs on site and we didn't even go up the valley! The best were 2 Golden Plover over, 3 Redwing, 60+ Skylark over, 2 House Martin through (+2 other unidentified hirundines), 1 Siskin over, 1 Blackcap in scrub on the edge of the wood, 1 Snipe over and c.6 Chiffchaffs around. There was also numerous Meadow Pipits over but we didn't keep track of numbers.

Late news - on the 27th July John saw a colour ringed Black-headed Gull (it looks like I forgot to put it on the blog!) and this week he had confirmation that it was ringed in 2013 near Delfzijl in the Netherlands.