The best I can say about this week is that I've been sticking to the plan. Ignoring the increasing flood of migrants arriving in prime habitat, I've gone sub-prime.
On Tuesday I walked around a small patch of farmland surrounding a hamlet called Heath Green, about halfway between Branson's Cross and the motorway. At least I remembered to take a habitat photo this time.
This bridleway was the most promising area but in all honesty I didn't see much. A Great Spotted Woodpecker was drumming, a Mistle Thrush and a Sparrowhawk appeared, while migrants were restricted to the usual Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, and Swallows. It was a nice walk though.
Today was potentially even worse. I picked a small area in the north of my circle between Tidbury Green and Whitlock's End. Once again there was a bit of roadside woodland to look at and some scrubby bits which harboured the best discovery; a Common Whitethroat.
The only way to approach this, I concluded, was to imagine a bird which could conceivably pause here on passage; maybe a Pied Flycatcher or a Wood Warbler. As expected the birds weren't playing.
As I was close to Earlswood Lakes I decided to call in on my way home. Disappointingly the little shingle island which I noticed was diminished on my last visit, is now very small indeed. It still supported some of the eight Common Terns which were wheeling around Engine Pool, and interestingly two at least had colour rings. In one case I was only able to note the colour of the ring (green) and not read the lettering. However a second tern did have a readable ring.
This one was C51, and I am grateful to John Oates who did the research when he saw it yesterday. It turned out to have been ringed at Marsh Lane GP on 22 June 2022, and to have subsequently been sighted at Seaforth (Merseyside) in June 2024, then back at Marsh Lane GP in May 2023 and April 2024, followed by Formby Point (Merseyside) in August 2024, before appearing at Earlswood yesterday and today.
The only other noteworthy event was that I somehow lost my notebook there, so had to remember what birds I'd seen when inputting the data onto Birdtrack. Sometimes there are advantages to seeing hardly anything.
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