Saturday 30th August

This morning I found myself with fellow ringers at one of our ringing sites on Rawcliffe Moss. I feel I must apologise at this point for a lack of photographs. I will sort this out shortly. I promise! The aim of the ringing session was to see if we could catch any late summer migrants in a fairly newly planted (4-5 years ago) broadleaved plantation. And we managed to catch very few birds at all. In fact all we ringed were 4 Whitethroats and 2 Goldcrests!

On the birding front we didn't fair much better. A couple of Tawny Owls were calling as we put the nets up in the semi-darkness and other raptors included a Buzzard and the sub-adult male Marsh Harrier that has been hanging around for a few weeks now. Earlier in the summer it was looking very tatty as it started to moult but now its starting to look like a cracker!

Visible migration was very slow and I think that inland Fylde is very much a black hole when it comes to vis mig! Birds are obviously concentrated on the coast at places such as Rossall Point (one of my patches) and also alongside the Bowland fells. Well that's my theory anyway.

I know I am waffling on here and struggling to tell you about good birds, mainly because there weren't any! The only other bird of note was a calling Green Sand that flew south during the morning.

Wow a photograph! - juv Whitethroat