Thursday 16 December 2010

November 2010

It took me all of November to get up to date with a week of birding in October! Luckily (depending on your outlook) I have done very little birding since then, so catching up is a tad easier.

By the time we got back to Seaford (31 Oct) visible migration was all but over. A few Meadow Pipits moved over in the first week of November, and overnight Redwings moved over in very good numbers, up until mid-month. November 7th was particularly good. I took a sample count of 23 in 10 minutes, which works out to approximately 120/150 per hour. I'm assumig they would have been moving from approximately 20:00 to 05:00, about first light at this time. This would have meant that approximately 1080-1350 Redwings moved over during that night!

I also saw Siskins in Seaford on 16 and 18 November. I have never seen then actually in town before now, only flying over, so this was unusual. I haven't seen any since though, so I don't think they are wintering.

On 20 Nov, in a mixed flock of Goldcrest, Long-tailed Tit and Blue Tit, I saw a Chiffchaff of eastern origin, either abientus or tristis, but most likely the former. It was browner above and without any yellowish tone on it's underside, looking strikingly similar to the bird here (scroll down to 15 Nov). two Ravens also flew over today, and I saw my first wintering Redwings in Seaford.

After that, I saw very few birds until the snow arrived. On 28 November, a flock of 25 Lapwing and 30 Skylarks flew high over my house, all heading SW. I'll sign off with some photos from the garden taken recently...



2 comments:

  1. Hi Liam,

    Some very nice photos there. It sounds like you had a quiet month, but I guess not seeing too much makes you look forward more and more to the next time that you get out and do some good birding. That's interesting that you had an eastern race Chify - I recall a bird that I was pretty sure was a tristis on Fair Isle in October.

    Looking forward to reading more of you posts, any comments/feedback on my blog is much appreciated.

    ATB,

    Joseph

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  2. Hi Liam , cool photos of the pied wag and blue tits , well done on seeing the eastern chiffchaff to , i had a probable tristis chiff on scillies this oct but my views where quite distant so will go down as a possible , ps i have re added a link to your art blog on my blog , i must of removed by accident when i was updating , sorry about that
    atb
    Rob

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