Thursday September 11

A lovely sunny morning with a light to moderate south-easterly breeze. I returned to my usual circuit today, and noticed that some feeders had been erected by the small pond. This area was good for Greenfinches anyway, and this morning there were about 80 present plus at least 15 Siskins and a  Lesser Redpoll.

Moving into the chat field beyond, I inadvertently moved the Greenfinches before me, and then found four Whinchats and two Whitethroats. The former posed very nicely for photos.

Whinchat

There were no more Whitethroats today, so they are definitely disappearing now. At the flashes I counted five Green Sandpipers, four Snipe and 33 Teal. Also present was a single Black-headed Gull, and as I was hoping to sketch gulls today, it got the treatment.

Gulls are annoyingly scarce at Morton Bagot, and mostly occur as fly-overs. Having finished sketching, I then added a year-tick. The bird in question was Golden Plover, and it only made it onto the list by calling a couple of times as it flew over. I scanned around, but couldn't see it. the species was a bit of a banker, and I will be disappointed if I fail to actually see one this autumn.