The Safari learnt early this morning that there was a big
passage of Fieldfares going on today. Reports came in by phone, txt and on the
tinterweb.
There was a definite change in the weather the wind had
turned much more northerly and the temperature had plummeted, so much so that
the old ears were stinging when we got back indoors after taking Frank out...no
sign/sound of pre-dawn Fieldfares at 06.00, no sign of anything even the local
Robins and Blackbirds seemed to have been chilled in to silence.
It was uncomfortably cold on the wall which serves us right
for not dressing for the weather and so we didn’t give it long. Long enough to
see that there wasn’t much about and what there was wasn’t easy to see as the
‘heat’ haze coming off the water made everything look very wobbly. A few
distant Common Scoters and a single Red Throated Diver were all we could muster
in our five minutes of pain. A couple of Pied Wagtails hopped around on the
Promenade and a Grey Wagtail flew over but no Fieldfares, at this point we
didn’t know they were on the move.
By lunchtime we’d heard of a few thousand from all points
far and wide and now was our chance to find one on Patch 2...not the easiest of
patch ticks here. The wind was still whistling under our coat and up our back
so again we didn’t stay out too long. Just long enough to see no improvement on
the sea – the few scoters were still about but the diver had been replaced by a
Great Crested Grebe.
Below us on the quickly growing beach were six Sanderlings zipping
to and fro and a Redshank making its way through the wavelets much more
sedately.
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| Zipping Sanderlings |
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| Sedate Redshank |
Still not a sniff of any winter thrushes though.
An Oystercatcher probing for worms among the more expected
Starlings and feral Pigeons looked a little surreal.
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| Surreal Oystercatcher |
Where to next? Another bigger safari tomorrow with hopefully
some good photo-opportunities, a twitch and a chance to listen to a certain MA
describing his 25 years in conservation...not quite as many as we’ve done but
he’s probably achieved a lot more with them! We took the book to Australia
for bed-time reading but never got round to finishing it....what we did read
was pretty good.
In the meantime let us know if any of those thousands of
Fieldfares ventured into your outback.
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