Even Quieter!

I made the mistake of not checking the forecast before I went to bed last night and got quite excited by the forecast at teatime; high pressure stretching over from Fennoscandia with a rain front moving in from the west some time between 0400 and 0700! The chance of a decent fall I thought. I got up this morning and headed off expectantly to Mount Park. There was full cloud cover granted, but no rain, not even a sniff of some rain! In fact as I write this at 14:10 it still isn't raining. Not that I want it to rain at this very moment of course. I bumped in to Ian later at Rossall Point and he said that by late evening the forecast had changed with the rain now not expected until mid-afternoon.

The Mount was quiet, not a grounded migrant in sight! I then moved on to Rossall Point and it was very quiet here too. The wind was stronger than forecast and it was a fairly cold southeasterly. There were a few bird on the move and I had 5 'invisible' calling Reed Bunts, 9 Mipits, 7 Alba Wags, 4 Skylarks and 2 Rock Pipits.

A Wheatear fed exactly in the same spot as yesterday in the company of two Meadow Pipits and Stonechats; exactly the same as yesterday! By this point I was quite bored and decided to try and take a few shots of the Stonechat. They're not wonderful, but not too crap either!



I decided to call it a day earlier than normal as I was flogging more of a 'dead horse' than usual and called at Rawcliffe Moss to put some more food out at the feeding station. I was pleased to find that the Tree Sparrows totalled 46, an increase from a few days ago.

I have been birding since 1976 and I have all my notebooks from then. Recently I have been labelling the front covers so I know exactly what period each notebook covers. Previously I had to route through them all to find something specific or re-live some birding trip from the past.

Looking through one of my notebooks I noted that on 9th October 1983, 26 years ago to the day, I was watching a juvenile Roller at Horncastle in Lincolnshire! I can remember it was a pretty awful day with it being dull and cool with continuous rain. However, the iridescent wing panel on this fairly otherwise drab Roller (compared to an adult that is) brightened up the day!