Monday 11 September 2017

Crests Not Leach's

The 'Hairy Birder' is stuck indoors at the moment up to his eye-balls in Countryside Stewardship Mid-tier applications that have an end of September deadline to be submitted to Natural England by, so today's brief blog entry is about grounded Goldcrests from yesterday, before all the Leach's and Sabs Gulls of the past couple of days!

 Goldcrest on a sunnier day than today

And to add 'insult to injury' I'm stuck indoors all week! However, my master plan is to have the decks cleared by the end of next week and take the remainder of September and all of October off to bird...bring it on!

The forecast Saturday night was for a brief ridge of high pressure to nudge in to the west and then for rain showers in the early hours after midnight. Unfortunately, it was forecast for the wind to pick up rapidly during the morning with a rain front rolling in by mid-morning. So sadly there was no chance of mist nets, but I did have a blustery ramble around the farm fields at the Obs. At first light I had full cloud cover with a 15 - 20 mph west-southwesterly wind.

First up were some 'ticking' Robins and the first of my dozen Crests. My first Goldcrest was calling from the copse and then another from the herb garden, which isn't unusual as there is usually always a couple in autumn knocking about these areas. However, what sparked my interest was that the other ten were from the farm hedgerows that were quite wind-battered with their exposed location, and even odder were a couple calling from the dry reedbed behind the sea wall. Interestingly, I didn't have any in the migrant habitat in the dunes and also the Crests were the only grounded migrants I recorded.

I had a brief look on the sea and all I had were 66 Sandwich Terns south and a couple of male Eiders. The vis was similarly unproductive, understandably so, with three Alba Wags, a Chaffinch and ten House Martins south. The walk back across the fields to my car was also unproductive other than a male Sparrowhawk working the hedge and ditch.

That's me signed off until weekend!

 Leach's Petrel - this is what I should have been watching this week and 
getting some better shots than this!

No comments: