Sunday November 2

A morning which started and ended with frequent showers, but in between, despite lead grey skies, the conditions were pretty good for birding. The very light south-westerly was particularly helpful for finding passerines.

Dave was back, and we gave it our best shot. The initial signs were encouraging as there was plenty of southerly passage.The main feature of this was the arrival, at last, of good numbers of Fieldfares. I logged 153 flying south, along with 220 Woodpigeons, 75 Starlings, and 100 Redwings.

Other small birds were well in evidence, and we counted 60 Skylarks, 80 Linnets, 50 Chaffinches, and 20 Goldfinches. Other notables were a male Stonechat and a very brief Kingfisher.

Once again the watery areas of the patch let us down. There were, admittedly, a lot of Mallard (maybe 150) on the main pool, but other than that we saw two Tufted Ducks, 17 Lapwings, two Green Sandpipers, a Cormorant, and 53 Canada Geese.

Back at the car I recalled I had only got the camera out once (a failed attempt to photograph a large female Sparrowhawk which was as thrilled as we were to see so many small birds). So as Dave drove home I decided to try to boost my photo-year list by targeting some of the small stuff I am still missing. I intend to get to 100 before I send my camera off for repair. This meant stalking along the road at the base of Bannams Wood.

Sadly the weather closed in and all I managed was a Goldcrest whose head was completely obscured by a branch. I briefly saw/heard Treecreeper and Coal Tit but no shot was attempted. So I am jettisoning the Goldcrest photo, and remain on 98.

What am I going to put into the blog? Well I did notice that the local Pheasants are behaving more strangely than usual, like sitting in trees, and in the following example on top of woodpiles.

Cannon fodder

 Stupid birds.