Thursday 11 August 2011

August Rain

Well look at that, two posts in a day?! Can it be? F*ck yeah. We knew something would happen today, our weather fixation led us to veritably jibb out over the forecast E/NE winds with heavy rain showers. This sort of weather (for those who aren’t obsessed like me) is pretty good at sweeping birds across the North Sea from Europe, Scandanavia and if we’re lucky Siberia while the rain causing them to make landfall as soon as possible.

Now today’s conditions weren’t ideal but boy did they produce!

A walk this morning produced a single Willow Warbler. But by lunchtime the totals had grown to 3 Whinchat, 2 Wheatear, 2 Garden Warbler, 1 Sedge Warbler, 1 Whitethroat, 3 Willow Warbler, 2 Pied Flycatcher. While a Greenshank and Green Sand passed over together along with a grounded Common Sand.




Recently we have been hard at work creating a lovely heterogeneous (varied) habitat complex for the different species that will pass through. All this work was well placed and it was great to see the different species using the various ‘niches’ provided.

News of birds on Staple Island saw us hitting the outer group like SE swell, scoring with Storm Petrel as we crossed the sound. Staple held 2 Grasshopper Warbler, 1 Garden Warbler, 2 Whitethroat, 1 Sedge Warbler, 2 Willow Warbler, 1 Pied Flycatcher and another Common Sand.
 
To the east on the mighty Brownsman birds were less numerous but Tree Pipit was a great addition to the Farnes day list while Whinchat, Whitethroat and 3 Willow Warblers brought some warblish diversity.
Further to the east at Longstone lighthouse we had 3 Wheatear, 1 Reed Warbler, 2 Garden Warbler, 7 Willow Warbler and another Pied Flycatcher…and this is mid-August! Man oh man this autumn’s going to be EPIC.

It was perhaps optimistic setting the moth trap last night but 174 moths of 19 species don’t lie (that’s good by the way!). New for the year was Common Carpet and possibly Square-spot Dart (pending confirmation). Immigrants were few and far between but 1 Dark Sword-grass and 2 Silver Y were better than nothing!

Here’s to tomorrow.

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