Tuesday September 1 - still sticking to the patch

At this time of the year there are distractions everywhere, birds to go for. A week ago I made the right decision when choosing not to twitch the Greenish Warbler in Staffordshire. It was not seen in the afternoon after its discovery. This weekend I may have made the wrong decision. A stunning adult male Red-backed Shrike is currently present in Sutton Park. I very nearly went there this morning but the news of its continuing presence missed my departure for Morton Bagot.

Fortunately I've had quite a nice morning. An adult Peregrine was sitting on a pylon, and within a few minutes of seeing that I found a female-type Redstart in the hedge between Netherstead Farm (under construction) and the paddocks.

Peregrine

Redstart

Although this is the same hedge as the last two sightings here, this is surely a different bird.

I ended up taking a slightly different route, missing out the chat field. Several Blackcaps, and other warblers were seen before I spotted another birder. He turned out to be Martin from a part of Redditch which is close to where I live.

We ambled to the flash field where Martin quickly spotted the Little Owl as it flew up into the foliage of its favoured oak. The flashes themselves just contained 38 Teal, and 29 Lapwings. However there was a surprise in store for us as the Goldfinch flock was accompanied by several Siskins. It's hard to get shots of Siskins here, so I spent the time I should have taken to count how many there were, trying to get a shot.

Siskin - probably a juvenile.

It looks like it will be a good winter to see Siskins. The first ones appeared over our house in June with a few Crossbills, and although there seems to have been a lull since then, I have noted odd Siskins calling over the garden again in the last week, and so an early autumn arrival seems on the cards.

Martin and I parted company, and I continued back to my car. I went through the chat field where there were no chats, and in fact I didn't add anything else of significance.

Will I be going to see the Shrike? The next two days we have visitors, and so on. So that's probably a no.

I'm a rubbish twitcher.