Pages

Friday 19 October 2012

Axe Cliff

After two days of meetings it was good to be out again.  Am pleased to have (for a change) timed it with favourable weather condtions too!

At dawn it looked promising for 'vis mig', so I went up to Axe Cliff.  The vis mig was actually disappointing both numbers and variety wise - probably due to a lack of any sorts of wind, and quite heavy cloud cover. All that went into the notebook was:

22 Wood Pigeon
40 Skylark
30 Meadow Pipit
19 alba Wagtail
21 Jackdaw
3 Jay (flew north)
28 Starling
55 Chaffinch
22 Linnet
12 Goldfinch
11 Siskin
1 Redpoll sp.
2 Reed Bunting (landed briefly in Undercliff)

It wasn't just in the sky that there was 'vis mig' though. Looking down into the Undercliff Goldcrest were filtering through west - with two main waves of birds passing.  So exciting to see a migration of this tiny bird in action.  Also down in the Undercliff, a Ring Ouzel appeared for a short while before flying east.  This bird certainly looked like the bird I saw on Monday, but was in a different area...

Maybe a first-winter male as it seems to have a nice black tail


I have been to other spots this morning, but saw nothing better than this Wheatear...

This bird was along harbour road - no Black Redstarts yet (which was what I was looking for!)

When I got home - annoyingly there seemed to be quite a few birds going over the garden (a couple of Redwing, few Skylarks and alba Wagtails). I wonder if I should have spent the morning watching from the garden - maybe I'll try that in the morning if the weather is suitable...

No comments:

Post a Comment