A day to remember

The 9th did not look like much of a day at 07:00, 3 Common Gull were nice, 3 Redwing over may be the last of this winter period, but it's fair to say nothing much was happening in he misty drizzle coming from the East.

So when Geoff texted to say Curlew and 2 Wheatear, it was time to shift on down to LFL and I arrived around 12:35, picking up the Curlew and one of the Wheatear relatively quickly. Whilst searching for the Wheatear, I found 3 White Wagtail, then 2 male Yellow Wagtail, but that wasn't the whole story either, while tracking one of the Yellow Wagtail a small brown bird was moving under the lush water's edge vegetation and as it was staying so low, my heart was racing at the prospect of something good.

When it did appear, it was a confusing few minutes, a pipit for sure, but rather dull, a bit olive, but strong malar, or moustacial stripe, but views were obscured by the vegetation and distance. It eventually flew into deeper stuff and I decided to dismiss it as never likely to show well enough. But 15 minutes later and it was out again, better for a few moments and showed white outer tail feathers and Trevor noted the facial markings again.

That was the best of the views and Trev and I did our own 'research' after, I found a nice blog from a Seaton birder on Water and Rock Pipit, including Scandinavian and my conclusion is that we were looking at a winter plumage Scandinavian Rock.

I left but others then found a Whimbrel which was gone by the time I got back at 16:30.

I will not be submitting any description to the rarities committee of the Rock Pipit

Two days later on the 11th I was out with my good friend John, on arrival I heard Linnet go over, nice start, A Sedge Warbler jumped around in front for a few moments too, then as we left Bittern hide later a very pale Pipit came over just above tree level, lightly streaked and looking only like a Tree Pipit would, it went over the new wet meadow and landed in the trees behind the Oaks, but out of view and was lost.

I'm still only on 105!