Saturday October 18

This morning has been designated as European Vizmig Day according to the Patchwork Challenge chaps. This involves co-ordinated counts of migrating birds across Europe. The requirement is to stand for at least two hours, recording migrating birds in one hour periods.

I love the idea of birders contributing to a grand scheme like this, not just at coastal headlands, but also at unassuming inland farmland patches like mine.

So I arrived just before dawn and started counting at 7.44am. An obvious problem soon arose. It is a rather subjective assessment of what is migrating and what is just moving from one field to the next. I decided to "count" only birds which were high up or were moving in a consistent direction.

The results are as follows:

First hour: 42 Redwings south-west, 14 Meadow Pipits south-west, 11 Chaffinches south-west, 13 Goldfinches east, and the star bird was one Brambling south.

Second hour: 97 Redwings south-west, 3 Meadow Pipits south, 11 Chaffinches south, two Goldfinches south.

Now for the grey areas. I also recorded 22 Woodpigeons, 55 Stock Doves, 16 Starlings, three Lesser Black-backed Gulls, a Cormorant, 6 Pied Wagtails, 19 Linnets, eight Greenfinches, and 11 Yellowhammers all potentially migrating, and while I stood there a Chiffchaff, and a Goldcrest appeared briefly in the hedge. Later on, a male Stonechat appeared out of nowhere and then hunted flies from the top of the hedge I was stood next to.

The Stonechat

The force 4 south-westerly was not ideal for encouraging visible migration and I certainly think that thursday was much better, but I guess it will be the same for everyone, so it will be interesting to see the results when they are published on the Trektellen website.