Up above

The Redwing passage that was covered in the previous post carried on to excite and inspire the following morning, here in Banstead (October 14th). Ordinarily, a westerly movement of 5,805 would elicit an awful lot more notice, but coming in the wake of the monstrous 26,013, was somewhat undersold. It was, however, my third highest Redwing total ever - anywhere. There is a perverse part of me that chuckles at the fact that, two days ago, my back garden spanked every other site in the UK for Redwing numbers, apart from that Surrey birding Death-star, Leith Hill tower. It goes some way to convince myself that I am not wasting my time here. There have been a few Chaffinches on the move, in their low hundreds, with a sprinkling of Brambling thrown in for good measure. I was able to watch a flock of 14 of the latter feeding on Whitebeam berries at the base of Colley Hill on October 12th (pictured). The nearby farmland held a flock of 400 Linnet and a local record count (for me anyway) of 40 Red-legged Partridges. A recent release, no doubt.