Friday September 4

After a week of rather unexciting weather, today was much in the same vein. A light northerly and mostly cloudy. I set off on my rounds seeing diminished numbers of common migrants, six Whitethroats, a Lesser Whitethroat, a Whinchat, but still plenty of hirundines and at least 10 Chiffchaffs. Several Siskins flew over calling, but I didn't manage to actually see any of them.

I was a little dismayed to find that the main land-owner has gone mad with the strimmer since my last visit, and there are now wide swathes of cut grassland surrounding the weedy fields. I imagine this has more to do with the forthcoming shooting season than with agriculture, perhaps the pheasant shooters can't bear to walk more than a few feet from their Range Rovers.

Anyway, I couldn't find the Corn Bunting among the handful of Yellowhammers and Reed Buntings, and the Black-tailed Godwit has gone. The flash field contained just three Green Sandpipers and 25 noticeably nervous Teal.

There was one group of birds which did its best to impress. The raptors. Three Kestrels in the ridge field were a precursor to a sighting of the immature Peregrine which flew onto a pylon. I decided to go for the sketchbook rather than the camera, but this was probably a mistake as the bird flew off just after I started drawing an outline of its head.

About an hour later, having seen several Buzzards and Sparrowhawks, my fifth raptor of the morning, a Hobby, put in a brief appearance. This encouraged me to spend 30 minutes scanning the skies hoping for something bigger and better. It was not to be, and instead I contented myself with some attempts at circling Sparrowhawks.

In addition to seeing the raptors I logged four Meadow Pipits flying south, and noticed that some of the Swallows and House Martins seemed to be determinedly heading south-west. The scanning also picked up a single Common Swift, possibly my latest for the patch.