Sunday 13 October 2013

Redwing passage

Sunday dawned grey , with light rain and a gentle northerly wind . I was not out as early as I should of been and after a quick scan of what had arrived along the east coast yesterday I was thinking that I may have missed out.
Redwings were still passing over with 233 plus passing over south to south west , all coming from an easterly direction and all in a hurry to get where they were going.
Meadow Pipits were few in number with only 7 plus been around today and Skylarks only numbered 12 today ,but Pied Wagtails put in a decent showing with 7 passing over.
A call from high above alerted me to a/some Golden Plover which were passing over high in the murk, but they were hidden in the low cloud base , these were soon followed by 9 distant duck in from high north , I soon realised that they were Wigeon, the first of the winter , they decended into the river meadows .
A "charm" of 21 Goldfinch were in the hedges but in the strong wind it appeared that most other small passerines were keeping a low profile
The raptor flag was carried by 3 Buzzard and a female Sparrowhawk which attempted to take the head off a perching crow. It missed but gave the crow one hell of a shock.
A very distant flock of 30  Thrush were hard to pin down but looked very like Fieldfare, another couple of Mistle Thrush looked like our winter visitors rather than transient birds.
The best of the rest were 2 Red Legged Partridge, and 4 Stock Dove.
So there was no Yellow Browed Warbler or even a Yellow Browned Warbler , sorry about the error yesterday must learn to read it before I push the publish button.