Good 2 hours

I got down shortly after Brian texted to say he'd not id'd 2 waders going over BSL, from his description they sounded like Ruff to me, but we'll never know.

With all the layby parking taken I went to the car park field and in moments saw an adult Hobby moving South lowish over Lavell's.

Trev and Alan joined me and we watched the sky for about an hour, before heading to the bottom of the field, where Alan got onto a Wheatear on a vent, it moved 4 times in under 10 minutes, leaving Brian just a few seconds to view it before we lost it on the near Eastern landfill cell.

I gave out the 3 July Wheatear records last month and August birds are fairly common, but it is early month birds that are not, all the pre 10th records comprise;

2nd & 6th 1984
1st 1985
7th 1987
2nd 1989
5th 2011









We counted around 50+ Swallow on the wires, then whilst scoping over LFGP I got onto 2 large black birds heading in from the NNW, they were about 600-700 yards away but even at that range their strong wing beats and large heads and bills said 'Raven' immediately and sure enough they came over just East of the car park field, meaning we had to move to the field to get better views, they were followed by a third and then a fourth, the last bird stopped short over the landfill, circled, 'tumbled' and headed off NNE, with the third after it. Alan sent me these nice record shots;

We all noted how they had their bills open frequently, but only one of us got a brief call, so wonder if they have an inaudible call too? This is the largest count of Raven so far and first August record and marked the 84th species for the month, 9 to go to equal last years record.