Wasn't expecting a two tit day

The Safari's early morning patch 2 look had the beach looking very different – the engineering gang were dismantling the old waste water pipe, the beach will never be the same again the new pipe is buried. Will we ever find Hermit Crabs again? Where will the Butterfish live? There’ll be far fewer wading birds on Patch 2 as the best area of soft silty mud was against the old pipe – suppose they call it progress but it will be what the original beach was like before they put the pipe in in the 1930s.

And there shouldn't be any more sh*t (oops we mean sewage) on the beach in future. Birders reading this rubbish can’t fail to have noticed there’s been a bit of an influx of Yellow Browed Warblers the last week or so, for non-birders reading this they are a tiny little bird from the Siberian forests a long long long way away and most spend the winter in SE Asia. With little happening at sea we decided to have a long slow trawl round the work’s garden for a look and, more importantly, a listen. As it happened there was little happening here too.

A look on the FBC sightings page showed there was a bit of Coal Tit movement locally but no YBWs – yet! Other information sources told us that we were surrounded with YBWs almost equidistant to the north and south of us – gotta be one round here somewhere!

Then mid-morning we got an email telling us there were decent numbers of Coal Tits in unusual places in town and asking if we'd had any migrant passerines so we went out again and knock us down with a feather in the Tamarisk bushes in the far corner of the garden we heard a Coal Tit call (P2 #67?) And after a bit of pishing it was obvious there were at least two in there. One was very flighty flitting from shrub to shrub the other stayed hidden but calling until they both flew into the boundary hedge.

At lunchtime we had another look at the sea but the glare to the south was strong in the bright sunshine and straight out at any distance was hazy. We guesstimated 1000 – 1500 Common Scoters and saw a Razorbill, another auk sp, a Red Throated Diver and a Great Crested Grebe before giving up and having another garden bush bashing session.

There are loads of House Sparrows; they seem to have had a good season this year, at least three Dunnocks ‘autumn peeeping’, a chittering Robin, a Blackbird but no more Coal Tits and still not a sniff of any YBWs. 

There was though another extreme rarity, the second here Blue Tit in as many weeks! It’s almost inconceivable that we’ve ever had two species of tits on the same day before! #Patchgold as they say. This time we even managed to get a pic!

On the way back to Base Camp and only 100 or so yards from work a Sparrowhawk was cruising not too high above the rooftops,was this the raptor that had sent the gulls into a panic mid-afternoon that we left the office in a rush for but missed or was that something more exciting?

Where to next? Out on site early tomorrow and there may be some more Meadow Pipits involved,might well be another work's garden YBW trawl or two too.

In the meantime let us know who’s got all the tits in your outback