Saturday 10 October 2020

October right on track

 I've been waiting for a still morning to coincide with my availability and when I got to Ron's around 07:00 this morning, I saw 2 flocks of small finches at the far end of the landfill heading South, I packed up and left after barely any time and I'm glad I did.

Almost upon arrival at the bottom of the car park field a flock of 17 Linnet headed down the middle of the landfill South, easy to pick out their colours in the morning light - a much awaited year tick. I concluded that the flocks I'd seen from Ron's were most likely the same species. 

Every few minutes I could hear Chaffinch and started picking up small groups of 3 to 9 heading WNW, after 2 hours I'd seen at least 60-70 birds, checking for Brambling whenever I got close enough views. 1 then another lone Swallow went South, 5 Reed Bunting, 4 Skylarks, then 2 'smalls job' landed on the wires next to a Meadow Pipit, I scoped and was rather happy to see Redpolls, quite pale ones as it happens, but in my haste to get video footage they dropped below before I could either record, or convince myself of them being Mealy candidates, so I'm hedging on Lesser Redpoll for my year list.

I picked up 4 Redwing coming South above the trees beyond Lodge Wood, a few Meadow Pipit dotted around, then headed for BSL, where I picked up an adult Common Gull, it seems the first of the autumn, all in all, 2 year ticks in one October day is a pretty good show, when on average I get three in the whole of October, putting me on 126 for 2020.

If I can pick up a Brambling any day and against the odds a Jack Snipe graces our shores and we get a late Garganey, I am nearly on that minimum 130 target.

No comments:

Post a Comment