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Saturday 18 April 2009

Beer Head's Bird Of The Spring

...so far anyway!

My alarm was set for 06:50 this morning despite not getting to bed until gone 1am. This was the reason why I kept feeling the need to hit the snooze button! Between alarms my partially awake brain registered the sound of a text message being received. I glanced at it, it was from Ian M and it read... "Pied Fly by drinking trough beer head".

I received this text at exactly 07:12 when I was lying flat on my bed dropping in and out of sleep. So I think it's rather impressive that at 07:31 I had a bin-full of stonking male Pied Fly near the end of Beer Head!! It showed superbly, spending lots of time perched on a near fence, occasionally making brief forages to the ground to pick up some breakfast....something that I had not had! A good bird to get on patch, it's only my second male here ever, the other five or so I've seen have been female/dull autumn jobbies. It was too windy to bother bringing my scope and camera along, but Karen should have some photos on her blog later.

Whilst wandering back to my car at about 08:30, an invisible Yellow Wag flew over calling, which was a bonus - our first of the year.

Another Yellow Wag flew over me at Seaton Marshes but there was little else on show. After I had returned home for some breakfast I was out again thanks to a phone call from Bun, he'd got a male Whinchat in Beer. Ten minutes later I was there and was soon watching it, another stunning bird! Karen later turned up, so again if you want to know what it looked like take a look at her blog later.

Whinchat is a landmark bird for me, being my 150th species on patch this year (click here to see the Surfbirds Local Patch Year List). 48 to go to beat the previous record....

1 comment:

  1. Hmmm....'too windy' is a new one on your 'list of excuses for not carrying scope'!! Sounds a little better than 'more than 10m from car' I guess! Not that you're getting a reputation or anything..... ;o)
    Congrats on 150-up. That's come round quickly!

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