It wasn't too clear on Sunday morning when Gail and I were having our usual walk along the estuary, in fact we had five oktas cloud cover, with a 10 mph westerly wind.
I think I have said before, that the Quay isn't the best location for observing vis, and it was mid-morning, but we did have five Grey Wagtails, three Meadow Pipits, 225 Pink-footed Geese, five Skylarks and two Chaffinches over.
On the mud in the Quay were 101 Redshanks, a Common Sandpiper, a Curlew, two Black-tailed Godwits, five Oystercatchers, four Grey Herons and two Little Egrets, plus in the creeks 19 Mallards, two Teal and two Wigeon.
Raptors were represented by Kestrel and Peregrine, and both making use of artificial structures. And that was it bird-wise. We did have a new species of plant for us for the site for the year, in the form of Bilbao Fleabane, we think! This takes our total of vascular plant species recorded, excluding grasses, to 75.
On Monday, Gail and I were south of the Ribble carrying out our second October visit to our wintering bird survey site. It was fairly clear here, with three oktas cloud cover, and a 10 mph easterly wind. As we start our vantage point (VP) survey from first light, the first birds are often birds just flying over that are exiting a nearby roost. Birds falling into this category, were the 112 Black-headed Gulls and 111 Collared Doves we recorded. We had a further 25 Collared Doves during the morning, taking our grand total to 136. This is the most Collared Doves that I have recorded for some time.
Part of our survey square includes a fairly large field with cabbages in that are past their best now, and with the spacing of the cabbages it is a fairly open, weedy crop, attracting Skylarks and Linnets. We had 58 Skylarks and 166 Linnets in this field. Another field that held a number of finches, was a small field of sunflowers, and in here were roughly 50 each of Chaffinch and Greenfinch.
Just two species of raptor this morning, a Kestrel, and a Merlin early on that shot east. It was difficult to discern which birds were truly moving on vis, or moving between feeding areas, but in the vis category, we recorded eight Skylarks, four Chaffinches, two Siskins, 45 Pink-footed Geese (very high) and eight Whooper Swans. A flock of 46 Fieldfares, our first of the autumn, that headed north-east, I think were perhaps heading to feeding areas.
We had 87 Lapwings, and with them were two Golden Plovers, and a single Goldcrest and four Tree Sparrows were the best of the rest.
Two mornings later, Gail and I were at the Nature Park under clear skies, with a light north-easterly breeze. In fact, I would have recorded it as calm, if it wasn't for the nearby wind-turbine facing north-east and turning slowly! We got there an hour before sunrise, again in the hope that we might catch a few Redwings, but as last time, as we drove round opening the gates on to the site, we couldn't hear any calling.
Even after we had put the first net up, and switched on the MP3 players, we still hadn't heard a Redwing. Shortly after putting the second net up, we started to hear some Redwing calls. As we were putting the nets up, about 2,000 Starlings exited the roost, and these were the first that we had recorded for a few weeks. It might be that later in the autumn and into winter they exit the roost earlier, to ensure that they maximise feeding opportunities during the less daylight hours that are available.
In the end, we didn't have many Redwings at all, perhaps 35 - 40, with four Fieldfares, and I wondered whether it was too clear? Our vis totals would support this theory, with just fourteen Whooper Swans, a Siskin, 136 Jackdaws, 31 Greenfinches (dropped in) and two Meadow Pipits. If I remember correctly, Ian Newton in his excellent book Bird Migration states that about 70% of day-flying migrants are flying beyond the range of our sight and hearing, so on clear days like this, it probably is too clear to record anything, as everything will be very high.
Pink-footed Geese were calling from before sunrise, as they start getting noisy on their estuarine roost, before noisily heading off to foraging areas. It wasn't until later in the morning, that we started seeing any, 287 to be precise, and these were high-flying migrant birds. A flock of 47 Golden Plovers south was noteworthy, and probably the only noticeable grounded bird we had was a Goldcrest.
We ringed 24 birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):
Redwing - 2
Blackbird - 1 (continental bird)
Reed Bunting - 1
Cetti's Warbler - 2 (2)
Blackcap - 2
Chaffinch - 2
Greenfinch - 14
And that was that. The forecast is looking okay for some birding tomorrow morning, but after that it is looking a bit unsettled. We have probably got about another 2 - 3 weeks of autumn migration left, so I'll be keeping everything crossed for some decent weather.
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