Count the Wood Pigeons

These few days of clearer, calmer and slightly cooler weather have provided the perfect opportunity for Wood Pigeons to migrate along the south coast, in numbers.  Always an incredible spectacle to witness.

Yesterday morning (6th) I enjoyed a terrific hour of vis migging from Cliff Field Gardens, which I will post about in greater detail soon enough.   However in the meantime, take a look at this video...

The video shows one of the flocks of Wood Pigeons that came past me heading west during my watch. And I am intrigued to know how many birds you think are in this flock?  

Counting large flocks of birds is always a great challenge, especially when they are flying through quickly and when there are several flocks passing at the same time, all in different directions and at different distances. And flocks of all different shapes too!

As vis miggers and sea watchers will know, it can get a quite frantic and almost overwhelming at times, so I cannot recommend enough honing your flock-counting skills.  Saves valuable time getting a semi-accurate count at a glance.

Try not to pause the video, just watch it through in one go, although feel free to watch it a few times as you'd usually get that chance in the field. Probably best to make the video full screen for ease, sorry the quality isn't great.

Answers in the comments or via Twitter please, don't be shy.  However if you aren't confident enough to announce your best guess, I hope you still think of one and check back here in a few days time for the answer!