Across The Black Sands

It was a day of arable farmland birds for me today as I was surveying some farmland in the Bickerstaffe area. The 'black sands' in my title refers to the soil type in the area and the 'black sand' is very evident in the tilled fields at the moment.

 The Black Sands

I was surveying three farms that are next to each other and I had a suite of arable birds including 14 Tree Sparrows, 28 Corn Buntings, 8 Skylarks, 6 Lapwings, 4 Grey Partridge, 2 Yellowhammers, 39 Linnets and 5 Stock Doves.

It was evident that there was a movement of Meadow Pipits as I had a consent movement of singles/small groups of birds over head on 'vis'. A quick call to Ian on the coast confirmed that there was quite a movement of Mipits this morning as he was having groups of 20s, 30s and 40s going over Fleetwood.

A singing Bullfinch from some scrub was nice and 2 Chiffchaffs sang from woodland; but no Willow Warblers. Out on the 'black sand' 45 immaculate Lesser Black-backed Gulls were feeding on recently ploughed earth and two male and one female Wheatear were close by.

The only raptors I had were 2 Buzzards and a single Kestrel. It's the 'obs' for me in the morning, so I'll let you know how I got on.