Monday 9 November 2009

9th November 2009

Very little wind and quite foggy at times this morning and as a result quite a lot of Hilbre scarcities were logged today, although most of the grounded 14 Blackbirds, 5 Song Thrushes and a female Blackcap cleared off not long after dawn leaving most records referring to flyovers.
Across overhead were 19 Skylarks, 450 Starlings, 5 Redwings, a Stock Dove, 9 Greenfinches, 7 Chaffinches, 2 Lesser Redpolls and a Reed Bunting. A party of 3 Snipe flew west over the north end of the island.
A drake Eider showed briefly at the north end, 16 Wigeon in total moved around the shore and a Lapwing stayed some time with the oystercatchers on the east hoyle bank.
The Brent with the red and blue colour rings (left) was definitely identified as the Dublin ringed bird from last winter that also showed briefly early last month. It would be interesting to know where it has been for the last few weeks.
Ringed:- 1 Blackbird, 1 Meadow Pipit
(DB,CJ etal) [583] photo CJ

2 comments:

Pete Marsh said...

I've just linked you to the Heysham Obs site. Any ideas why we caught 44 Goldcrest this spring (after a so-called hard winter) and, like you & everywhere else, hardly seen any this autumn? We didnt ring any in September from memory.

Regards

Pete Marsh

Hilbre Steve said...

Hi Pete

Thanks for the comment and the link - we'll put a link to Heysham Bird Obs on our site as well.

I was on St Agnes for the last week of October and Firecrests seriously outnumbered Goldcrests!

I don't know the reasons why it has been such a poor autumn for them - although I gather it has affected the whole country not just the west coast.

If you have any theories or hear of any I'd be interested.

All the best
Cheers
Steve