NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Birds on visible migration (vis-mig) can provide some of the most spectacular of ornithological experiences, so much so that there is a band of birders who dedicate their time to seeking out such events. I count myself as one of them albeit on a lower plane than the most obsessive of aficionados. It is a sub-sect of the birding family that will spend hours scouring weather maps for tell-tell signs of a possible upcoming vis-mig happening and will then ensure that they are at their chosen vantage point by, or shortly after, dawn. There are websites devoted to the observations gathered by such birders (for example Trektellen ) and also WhatsApp groups where data can be instantly shared. It is an inclusive world in which the celebration of bird migration is a central pillar. People that you have never met become virtual friends and places that you have never visited become as familiar as your own back garden. Those that get their vis-mig kicks from sea watching will hopefully excuse my la...

October has now given me seven days worth of back garden sky watching, so it seems like a good time to report on what has been happening… not an awful lot really. Each day, from a numbers perspective, has been disappointing. Here is a bit of detail: 1st - I was dead keen, in the garden when it was still dark. A gusting wind and heavy rain found me cowering in the garage, watching through a side door that allows a view of the eastern sky. Spent most of that time observing which neighbour’s guttering was in need of repair. Nothing moving. 2 hours of my life that I’ll never get back. 2nd - another 06.45hrs start, again accompanied by a f2-3, then 5-6 SW wind and constant rain. More sheltering under garage and shed than proper birding. A few crumbs moved south - 2 Pied Wagtail, 1 Grey Wagtail, 12 Meadow Pipit, 1 Song Thrush, 2 Jay and 11 Goldfinch. Didn’t feel quite so cheated. 3rd - A three hour (7-10) shift that just proved that I wasn’t standing beneath a functioning fly line, although ...

For a bit of fun, and to spice up what could be a long and difficult spring's birding (lockdown, sticking to dry inland patches, etc), I've devised a scoring system for the more notable migrants. It is loosely based on my perceived status of each species at a local level (hence why acrocephalus warblers have a higher score than might otherwise be expected). Being basically dry (only one modest ‘village’ pond) almost all wildfowl and waders will be flyovers and of few species. Each individual bird scores, thus a flock of 5 Yellow Wagtails would score 15 points. I will also score birds as bird/days, so a Black Redstart that stays on site, and which I observe over four different days, will score 28 points in total. All meaningless but a bit of fun - it will, at the very least, amuse me. The patches that will be covered are all within two miles of home: Priest and Howell Hill; Canons Farm; Epsom and Walton Downs. Plus the garden and anywhere in-between. 1pt   Wheatear, Willow Warbl...

Trektellen, the website that collates migration counts, is a wonderful place to while away a few hours.  This Dutch site has spread its wings across Europe, and the number of contributing sites - including British - keeps on growing. As much as most of us think of meaningful visible migration counts coming from coastal sites, there are a number of inland sites that have provided some excellent data. As a county, Surrey is poorly represented. I thought it about time to increase its contribution. Anybody who has visited this blog on a regular basis will know that I love watching migration in action, particularly if it is local to me here in Banstead. It just means more. Luckily I have two sites on my doorstep (one of them literally) that provides such thrills. My garden has a good track record in the autumn - thrush rushes (4,000 Redwings in a day), four figure hirundine days, hundreds of finches, pipits, the odd unexpected bird (Woodlark, Golden Plover, Honey Buzzard, Hawfinch) - ...

A mad half-hour in the skies above the back garden here in Surrey. At 11.45hrs I happened to glance out of a window and saw a handful of hirundines in view. I grabbed the binoculars and walked out to the stirring sight of an enormous flock of House Martins, slowly making their way south-eastwards. They were widely scattered and numbered at least 700 birds. The morning had been very wet, with pulses of heavy rain driven by a blustery south-westerly wind, and this flock was passing through on such a pulse. I kept my eyes to the skies and was rewarded half-an-hour later by another 250 House Martins, heading on a more south-westerly bearing - this was also during another burst of heavy rain. Over the following three hours, and with a gradual improvement in the weather, the hirundine stream didn’t stop, but certainly was not as spectacular. A total of 1175 was the final total. There does seem to be a clear line of movement across my immediate local area. Between our house and Nork Park, m...

There is something about watching birds on the move that is special. To see flocks fly past in a hurry, born out of instinct and necessity, is to witness a natural phenomena that predates our time on earth. My tastes in observing such movements are not fussy - they could be terns or waders over a sea; hirundines contouring low over a headland; or, like this morning, thrushes en route to their wintering grounds by flying over my back garden. I was out at first light, but it took a good hour before the floodgates opened. By 09.15 it slowed, coming to a virtual halt by 10.30 hrs. My final total was of 4,145 Redwings, all moving west in flocks of up to 150-200 in size. None hung around. These were ably supported by 308 Chaffinches with a few Fieldfare and Brambling alongside. I'm now hoping for more of the same tomorrow...

I've got an itch that I need to scratch. Something that is missing from my ornithological life. And that is getting involved with this 'nocturnal migration' malarkey. There are a band of brothers (and no doubt some sisters) who are sticking microphones out in their gardens overnight and recording the sounds of the night-time that would otherwise go undetected. It sounds like fun - it sounds like the sort of thing that I'd get involved in. I've investigated what is needed to get started, weighed up the pros and cons and... well, I haven't quite taken that final leap into the purchase of a recorder, a microphone, and the download of software - but we are getting near to that point. What's not to like, sifting through several hours worth of recording and separating the car alarms, aircraft and foxes from the calls of migrating waders, Coots and Common Scoters? I love nocturnal bird calls. I've spent an April night sitting on the moat at Dungeness and list...

They were arriving high above me, too high to be seen with the naked eye, and had I not been scanning with binoculars I would have missed them. They were spaced out and came in pulses, the largest group being 50 strong. A few of the birds dropped lower and resolved themselves to be mostly House Martins with a few Swallows as company. Being at elevation, standing on the mound that overlooks The Watercolours pits at Holmethorpe, I had a good 360 degree view. The hirundines continued to arrive and head off east, but they still mostly kept high. Had I not known they were up there they would have carried on with their remarkable journeys unobserved by human eye. A journey that many of them would be making for the first time, born of instinct and need. After only 45 minutes the procession dried up, leaving me wanting more, but my notebook told me that 700 House Martins and 300 Swallow had moved through. I stepped out into the garden at 18.05hrs to have three Swallows zip inches over my hea...

Dungeness October 1982 I return to the coastguard lookout and shelter from the howling SW wind by leaning against the east facing wall. Huddling up to the brickwork I have a fairly good view over the turbulent sea, although the braking waves are hidden from my view by the shingle bank. Because of the reluctance of the wind to drop below force 6 or out of the westerly quadrant land-bird observation has been difficult and not an option that I have taken up these past few days. As some form of compensation I’ve been drawn to the sea. Not a great deal of bird movement is apparent but enough to keep my interest. But, even if the birds are absent, the seascapes are not. I find that after the initial discipline of counting the few species on view, my mind reaches a state of calm and I lose myself in the cold greys and greens of the spume-laden sea. Rollers rush in to collide with the shingle beach and although that moment of collision is hidden from me I can hear its climax and see the s...

Now that we have autumn upon us, I thought I'd share with you a tremendous day's birding that I had just over the English Channel, at Cap Gris Nez, on October 19th 2004 in the company of Sean McMinn. I have lifted the narrative straight from my notebook. "Weather: Wind SE f2-3, light overcast, dry and cool. We arrived and parked just as the first shards of daylight appeared in the eastern sky. Even though it was far too dark to bird, the birds themselves were already on the move. From the blackness above came the calls of Chaffinches and Bramblings, at first just isolated calls, then small flocks and as the daylight finally broke an unending procession of contact calls. The day had promise (we had already flushed a Long-eared Owl as we approached the headland, seen in the car headlights). Single Ring Ouzel and Woodcock alighted nearby as we were finally allowed to see the birds streaming overhead and assess their numbers. Chaffinches were the dominant species, but Bram...

It's a bloody fool who looks out of the window or watches a weather forecast and decides that 'it's no good for birding' and, based on such gut instinct, decides to stay indoors. I should know, I've been that bloody fool on more than one occasion. With a biting easterly all the way from Siberia, snow, wind chill and a blanket of dull greyness you could be forgiven for thinking that bird migration would be halted. Not a bit of it. This weekend has seen Red-rumped Swallow and Common Swift on Scilly, a Bluethroat and Kentish Plover in the Portland area, quite a few Ring Ouzels strewn across the south, three (or four) Stone-Curlews (including one at Wanstead), a passage of overland Little Gulls, Common Redstart, Hobby - I could go on. Obviously not all birders have been fooled into thinking that their efforts were bound to go unrewarded. In Surrey, Tices Meadow outdid Beddington with Kittiwake, Little Gull, Black-tailed Godwit, LRP, Grey Plover, Ringed Plover, Redsh...

Unless you suffer from SAD, the continuing trend for cool, wet and overcast weather is nothing but a mild irritant. Yes, it can get you down, but before you know it we'll be basking in a period of unbroken sunshine, high temperatures and a call from the government for drought conditions to be declared (oh, hold on a minute, that's already happened...) So, where are the positives? Well, it's not a bad time to be out birding. The seawatching has been interesting along the south coast, headlands have been receiving falls of migrants and for the inland patch birder things have been very interesting indeed. Take Beddington Sewage Farm for example. The local birders there have long known that heavy overcast with an easterly component in the wind (preferably ENE) will bring down passing migrants within the birders vision. Because coverage is good (thanks mainly to Johnny Allan and Peter Alfrey), not much gets missed, and over the last seven days the following selective waders ...

There may well be plenty of rare birds around at the moment, but in the Birdguides weekly round-up the following caught my eye: 'September is normally the peak month for arrivals of Robin and Song Thrush , but the main arrival seemed to be this week along the east coast. A flavour of the migrants involved comes from Holme Bird Observatory (Norfolk), where standard counts on 10th produced 4,500 Robins, 2,500 Song Thrushes, 6,500 Redwings , 250 Chiffchaffs , 7,000 Goldcrests , an impressive 300 Long-tailed Tits , 11 Jays , 1,500 Chaffinches , 800 Bramblings , 600 Greenfinches and 1,100 Siskins .' I would sooner have experienced the spectacle above rather than have seen any of the rare species on offer this week...

There are still some days when the 'hard-core' birder within me tries to break out. Today was such a day. I was sitting on the beach at Ferring, in West Sussex with my family enjoying a rather fine picnic lunch. The sun was shining and the only ornithological interference came from a couple of Sandwich Terns that were patrolling the beach. Then the cloud arrived, and with it the first House Martins, which flew low and purposefully westwards, some of them passing inbetween our sitting group. After five minutes it was obvious that these hirundines were not an isolated flock but the vanguard of something altogether grander. I spent more time paying attention to the visible migrants (apart from when it was time for coffee and cake!) and it was then that I ached for that Empidonax flycatcher on Blakeney Point or one of the inland Gannets that have delighted a number of patchworkers. Calming my birding hyperventalation down, I kept calm, and for the next two hours reckoned on 12,00...