Thursday 22 March 2018

2018 flying high

I knew things had been tracking well and no individual species makes a year, but the bonus birds keep coming for me.

All was pretty quiet this morning at Lea Farm G.P. today, then up went everything....Peregrine? No some muppet dog walker on the East shore, you've got to be kidding me. Off I went, quickly locked the hide, running back the green bridge and clambered over barbed wire fence.

As I crossed the the ditch at the base of the Southern spit, I whistled to the man now heading East parallel with Lavell's. So it went something like "my dog ran off at the gate, which was open and I couldn't catch him, so I kept chasing and now I got this far I'm trying to get back home not far from the Chocoholics place".

I explained in polite terms he was on private property and should he come back, would be faced with gates and promises of fines. He seemed genuinely apologetic.

Onwards and out of breath I went, off to BSL sailing club, nothing, Lavell's Tern scrape, next to nothing, a last minute check of the car park field to see if a Hawfinch was about, led to my seeing a football sized bird lift of the ground and buzz over the hedgerow. I knew it was a Red-legged Partridge without even getting my bins on it, so ran to the landfill viewpoint, where I picked it up legging it to the track and watched it continue to adjacent to the recently cut willows, where it paused allowing terrible record shots, before speeding on West along the track out of sight.




99 for the year, blimey. In itself it's nothing amazing, but if you don't miss the annual migrants and continue hitting bonus birds, it makes for a darn good score and I know I remain 7-10 days ahead of any other year. This means if we get the expected Sand Martin, Blackcap, Redshank, then possibly add LRP, Wheatear, Garganey, Swallow, Curlew, Red-crested Pochard and early House Martin and Willow Warbler on the 31st, we could smash it out of the park on all fronts.

The month is also ahead, 1 more to equal the heady heights of 2012's 100 and the year on 101, needs 5 more to equal the running total in 2012.

Here is the shot of the Merlin on the post, distance and shakes make it impossible, but it was a fabulous male.


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