Stonechat invasion (sort of)

The north of Surrey enjoyed what us southerners think of as 'proper winter' today - a one inch fall of snow that sent the road network into a mild panic and birders to fetch their optics just in case all sorts of hard weather movement was about to appear overhead - but the snow was just localised, it melted by lunchtime and the birds didn't seem to move at all... or did they?

My visit to Priest Hill questioned whether or not stuff was stirred up a little bit, as a minimum of six Stonechats were in the Belted Galloway meadow this afternoon. I saw one female last week and three (one male) on Saturday. I have been giving the meadows a good grilling so I think it unlikely that the birds have been present all of this time, and it seems a bit early for the spring passage that this species does exhibit. Whether or not they have been widely dispersed across the site and have just come together I'll never know. Two males and four females kept me thoroughly entertained for an hour or so.

Earlier in the day I visited the River Hogsmill between Bourne Hall and Ewell Court. I was lucky enough to bump into local birder Colin Manville, who happily let me team up with him and showed me some of the local birding hotspots (if such things do exist within Surrey!). It was a morning of interest, with a Chiffchaff at Bourne Hall lake, two Grey Wagtails between the mills, a Kingfisher at Upper Mill, a Little Egret along the river (Hogsmill Open Space) where a furtive Water Rail also finally gave itself up.

The 2015 Patch Challenge increases to 67 species, which is, by my calculations 74.4% of my target. Today's additions were Chiffchaff and Mute Swan, neither of which were anything but expected.

Comments

Stewart said…
Stonechats do that dont they? They seem to move around at no given time for no real reason! We had none here for a couple of years after the winter of 2010 but in 2014 they finally bred again near our village. They vansihed late summer then the white throated one arrived in autumn. It has now gone, but a pair have just turned up on the coast path. I have no idea whats going on....
3 February 2015 at 19:56
Steve Gale said…
But I love Stonechats Stewart, I can forgive them such baffling behaviour - in fact, it makes them more endearing. One of my favourites!
3 February 2015 at 21:20
Paul Trodd said…
Same down here at Lade, they come and go without a by-your-leave, nearly always in twos or threes, and always when least expected, but always brighten up a slog across the shingle, smashing little chaps.
4 February 2015 at 07:44
Steve Gale said…
Couldn't agree more Paul.l
4 February 2015 at 09:27
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more