Friday 3 October 2014

After the treats seen on my Dungeness visit yesterday, it was a bit of a come down this morning back on my patch, mostly due to very dense fog, which reduced visibility to just 50 meters and which didn't clear until 10:00hrs.

I made a full patch walk despite the fog, and found myself really struggling for species, but in the end scraped up a creditable 44. The highlight of the walk was undoubtedly finding another STONECHAT on my second visit to Migrant Alley, this one was a cracking male :-)  Few other summer birds were noted, just 2 CHIFFCHAFFS and a flyover SWALLOW (49) for the months list. Three other species were added to the October list this morning, a KINGFISHER (50) was at the ornamental lake, and a MISTLETHRUSH (51) was in the large garden adjacent to the lake, already guarding a berry laden bush that he had staked out for winter  :-) The third addition to the months list was a LITTLE OWL (52) that sat in the Greenhouse Copse.

Flyovers of note were SPARROWHAWK, KESTREL and a group of 3 BUZZARDS, plus a trickle of SKYLARKS heading NW, BLACK HEADED and HERRING GULLS were also seen flying over, and a GREY WAGTAIL still commutes to the Greenhouse Grounds every morning  :-)

The camera was made redundant in the fog this morning, it might stay that way for a while looking at the change in the weather that's due tomorrow, I do have a couple of garden bird pics left in the ''blog folder'' though  :-)




4 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Nothing like a good pair of Tits in the garden Warren. Great captures mate.

Warren Baker said...

Marc,
They do brighten the place up a bit :-)

Pete Woodruff said...

Sounds like the Stonechat is down south in decent if not good number Warren. In reply to a query with Marc he suggested a possibility of up to fifteen the other day.

Warren Baker said...

Pete,
Another local patch watcher has been recording them on his patch too, see his blog at http://dittoneastmallingbarming.blogspot.co.uk/