28/9/13 Migration central with 27 or maybe 28 species from the garden today.

With it being the weekend I don't need to go out so I decided to go into the garden to see what there was about after a change of wind direction (has been from the South West but changed to South East (France, Belgium area)) and no fog this morning, as the cloud was high, it seemed that there was going to be much improvement. I was hoping a few grounded migrants would be seen due to the change and I was massively surprised with the results.

At the start, in the morning, many of the small migrants were sighted such as meadow pipit and skylark with only 3 swallows being sighted but a lot of gulls were seen too. Then when I officially started the counting of the swallows, late morning- roughly 11:15 there were much less of the small migrants and more gulls, swallows and although goldfinches are small a lot of them were seen as well. With a final total of 27 (maybe 28) it was a great morning for bird watching and one to remember. What will happen tomorrow?

Todays sightings altogether:

Trees

• 2 robins
• 1 great tit
• 1 chaffinch male
• 2 blackbirds
• 10+ house sparrows
• Collard doves
• Wood pigeons
• Corvids
• Roughly 11 gold finches in total
• Starlings
• 1 Coal tit- quite possibly one was heard.
• 5 Blue tits- usually 1 but when this individual arrived back from feeding in a garden another 4 arrived with it. This has indicated a minor influx but because the feral pigeons kept getting scared the birds reduced to only 1 by around 12:00.
• 1 WILLOW WARBLER- juv was feeding in one of the trees. Unusual. First record from house and most likely grounded last night. Sighted in roughly the same area as the chiffchaff was heard but very lemon yellow and only sighted in the morning compared to the afternoon chiffchaff.
• 1 CHIFFCHAFF- in song. Did not see the individual but heard it. First of Autumn.

 Blackbird male

WILLOW WARBLER Juv (Or is it the chiffchaff)

Opposite house

• 30+ feral pigeons
• Wood pigeons
• Collard doves
• 40+ starlings

Flying over (Best day by far)

• Corvids
• Collard doves
• Wood pigeons
• A flow of common and black headed gulls
• A few herring gulls
• A few Lesser black backed gulls
• 1 green woodpecker heard
• 30+ Goldfinches- one large flock
• 5 Skylarks-Flew from a field calling together
• 8 Meadow pipits- Flew South.(1,1,1,5)
• 4 House martins- feeding together before flying north
• 5 Unidentified waders- 3 looked like they were DUNLIN but the other two were different.
• 510 SWALLOWS- Sighted in 75mins. Amazing meaning on average there was 6.8 per minute but this was just an average as half the time we had none flying over and other times roughly 2- 20 flew over together. (Highest record for me from house)