For a change, Dave and I decided on a clockwise circuit. This meant more time being devoted to the fields, and none at all to the woodland margins. We began at the south end where we found the first of at least 29 Lesser Redpolls (a record), and the first of seven Stonechats (another record).
I have a love hate relationship with Redpolls. They are great little birds, but they do your head in because you have to check every one to rule out the continental species, Mealy Redpoll. Added to this is the difficulty of identifying what used to be races of one species, Lesser Redpolls varying from one individual to another according to age and sex.
Although there did seem to be a large one among the birds we saw, we never got to grips with it and we ended up identifying all the ones we saw well as Lesser. This one caused us a few problems though.
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| Lesser Redpoll |
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| Same bird |
Rather grey around the head, but thought to be too brown mantled, and the wing-bars had too much brown in them for a Mealy. There is a new article coming out soon in the Frontiers of Bird Identification series which I understand will include a chapter on Redpolls. I'll certainly be buying it.
The Stonechats were a pair in the ridge field, two pairs around Netherstead, and one male at the south end. Here is one of the females at Netherstead.
The other two species to break records were thrushes. We saw over a thousand Fieldfares and Redwings flying over, all going north-west, the break down being 576 Redwings and 437 Fieldfares. There were also a couple of flocks which were too distant to fully identify.
It was one of those days when there was never a dull moment. Other counts included 65 Goldfinches, 14 Chaffinches, 22 Snipe, four Green Sandpipers, 15 Yellowhammers, at least 10 Reed Buntings, five Siskins, two Blackcaps, a Grey Wagtail, and 15 Teal.
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