Wednesday 14 October 2009

Norse Invaders

There was a huge movement of Redwings over last night and into this morning. My notebook for last night reads as follows:

20:40. Redwing. 12 calls per minute
20:43. Redwing. 16 calls per minute
21:42. Redwing. 40 calls per minute
22:40. Redwing. Calls constant; very heavy passage. Also Blackbird in good numbers and some
calls from Song Thrush.

This morning as soon as I stepped out of my door in the dark Redwings were calling constantly. At 07:15 as it was coming light I was putting some things in my car and 83 Redwings appeared circling round before heading off southeast with a few calling Fieldfares.

Later this morning I had a site meeting on Freckleton Marsh at 10:00 and as soon as I got out of the car I had 400 Redwings go over within a few minutes. I also later had a nice flock of 30 Skylarks. Excellent!




Talking of Norse invaders, or should I say in this case Siberian invaders, it was only 2 years ago on this date that I watched a Yellow-browed Warbler in Fleetwood Cemetery. I had been in the cemetery earlier in the morning and had only had Goldcrest and Chiffchaff (and before you ask, no my Chiffie was definitely a Chiffie!). When I got home I got a telephone call saying SD had found a Yellow-browed in the cemetery. So I dashed back up there and there it was showing well in a single Scots Pine. However, it went to ground very quickly and even though other birders turned up nobody else saw it. I heard it calling from some adjacent gardens 30 minutes after I had last seen it, but then it just melted away as they often do.

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