Ton up..but still no garganey

I smashed the 100 mark this morning.

100 species of bird seen on the patch since January 1st, six days later than in 2010. The two new birds this morning were yellow wagtail and greenfinch, not really exciting I know.

I did my territory mapping survey this morning, there has been an influx of willow warblers with at least eight singing males heard. Up to seven chifchaffs were chiff-chaffing and a single gropper was reeling away from the reeds.

Out on the haul-road, the piles of chicken muck attracted eight wheatears, two white wags and a yellow wag as well as numerous meadow pipits, chaffinches and linnets. The retired birders might to worse than to keep an eye on the shit piles, I turned a lapland bunting up there last spring.

It was a lovely sunrise this morning, this was taken from Cresswell.

99 greenfinch
100 yellow wagtail

You're Barred!

After yesterdays fall of birds, I was itching to get back down to Druridge, so at first light I was on the patch, only for a couple of hours though - I had to be in Bamburgh for 10am.

I started at the north end, after checking the bushes and 'mugwort valley of death' I worked the whitebeam/blackthorn scrub. There were still an awful lot of birds about, in the narrow strip there were robins, dunnocks, song thrushes, blackbirds, chiffchaffs and a few reed buntings. As I worked my way along, I got onto a barred warbler moving through the low whitebeams, a first year bird,  I got good views, but no photos, wading through waist high, soaking wet,  reed canary grass had fogged up my camera lens.

Once the barred warbler disappeared into the thicker hawthorn and I had put it out on RBA, I headed south, picking up more redstarts and a couple of spotted flycatchers with more thrushes, a roving tit flock (without my predicted yellow-browed warbler in it) and good numbers of robins, wrens and dunnocks.

Last birds before heading to work were four wheatears in the southern paddock.

Not a bad morning, if I could've had another three or fours hours, there would of been more birds to find. This work nonsense doesn't half get in the way of birding, but I suppose I have to pay Kenya off somehow.

149 barred warbler