Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Yes, the blog is back after several more days’ forced inactivity thanks to the good old British weather.
Will and I had high hopes this morning that the many birds held up in the past few days would head south over Rawcliffe Moss with some urgency this morning. With the first autumn frost crunching underfoot we erected nets in the dark, grabbed a quick coffee, and then waited for birds to arrive at first light. The anticipated flood of birds appeared to be less than a trickle of thrushes, with just 25 Redwing and 12 Fieldfare arriving soon after dawn before drying up completely, leaving us wondering where they are.
At times the session was slow, but we persevered and the 4 hour stint ended up with a good selection of 25 birds of 8 species, 23 new and 2 recaptures. New: 11 Chaffinch, 5 Reed Bunting and 3 Goldfinch, with 1 each of the target thrush species, Blackbird, Song Thrush, Redwing and Fieldfare.
Compared to recent weeks even the movement of finches was lighter this morning, with less than 150 Chaffinches throughout the morning, approximately 10 Siskin, not a single Redpoll, but 2 or more Brambling. Reed Buntings were again conspicuous with 12 or more birds overhead or lingering on site, but the Meadow Pipit passage may be over with less than 20 birds over and south today. Eleven new Chaffinches pushed our site total for new captures of this species to 350 this autumn.
The other birding was pretty quiet too: A Barn Owl and 3 Tawny Owls at dawn, 13 Alba wagtail, 15 Tree Sparrow, 8 Linnet, 8 Snipe and 9 Whooper Swans, the latter our first ones of the beckoning winter.
