Another diary post: migging 13th

Another cool but glorious morning, soon we'll be getting early mists and they are good, for when the sun breaks through birds appear on tops of bushes to fluff off the morning dew - even the really skulky ones. Today though the breeze was still a bit too stiff to encourage anything to show in the exposed brooms. After a cursory look at the bushes in Long Wood (4 Lesser Whitethroat), I headed, armed with a coffee, down to the Alex to find me a Whinchat. The burnt areas were still stubbornly resisting being interesting; a couple of Magpie and a feral pigeon and later 3 Dunnocks mocking my prediction of migrant action. The Whinchat was a no show as well, but one or two Lesser Whitethroat, about 6 Commons, a Willow Warbler in the copse on the south side of the pub scrub, and 2 low flying Mipit promised a bit more birdy action than of late.

While trying to pin a sub-song in the brambles a dark-grey-backed bird with long wings skitted over the tops of the elder. Flycatcher or warbler? The views were brief and inconclusive as was my next view of the bird, from further off as it headed for the line of birch on the west side of the Alex scrub.  I followed.  A good few birds were racing through the gaps in the bushes, but no luck with the "interesting" one. I texted it out to the group, not that anyone has the time to stare at bushes for hours on the off-chance: "pigeon" suggested a helpful colleague...

I stayed in the Alex scrub longer than I had intended to as I felt like doing the complete circuit this morning, but that's what Sunday's are for.

2011 went a little something like this: Wheatear back on the 5th, a Spotted Flycatcher in the old sewage works on the 10th, Whinchat by the 15th, and a stonking day on the 19th pulled in Common Redstart and a flyover Kittiwake at the Shoulder of Mutton.  Pied Flycatchers started appearing on the 21st and Stu pitched in with the first Sedge Warbler of the year and a possible Grasshopper Warbler on the 23rd (one finally giving itself up on the flats a few days later).  Three Tree Pipit on the 24th and a small passage of Arctic Tern on the 26th, it was however Alexandra Park's turn for custody of the Wryneck.