Thursday September 25

A day off in the week. Blimey. The omens looked good. An extremely light westerly breeze and partial cloud cover. Upon entering last weekend's bird records onto BTO's Birdtrack I was rather startled to discover I had recorded 64 species without making any sort of special effort. Bearing in mind I bust a gut in August to do a Big Day and got to 65, perhaps I'm picking the wrong month. My 64 contained nothing particularly unusual.

Could I do it again? The answer, unfortunately, was emphatically no. I logged everything I saw, resulting in higher than usual counts of things like Blue Tits  (23), Robins (11), and Carrion Crows (18). But my final species count was a below average 47.

What was missing was the variety. No chats, no unexpected ducks, no Lapwings or Coots. There were a few minor highlights, nine Ravens was just one short of my site record, 26 Snipe flew out of the marsh, an eventual tally of 12 Swallows hurried south, while 48 Meadow Pipits, and three Grey Wagtails were also early autumn migrants. The Weaver is still here.

I returned to the car and realised that with all that counting I hadn't bothered to get my camera out. So I wandered about until something chose to play ball.

Common Buzzard

For every quiet day a good one is just around the corner, so watch this space.