22nd October

Another vismig day, with heavy cloud cover that rolled in right after dawn dropping a substantial passage to the sort of height where it could be readily appreciated. Wood Pigeons topped the tally over the Bill where c9000 passed through, with a peculiarity being flocks still moving well into the afternoon; 1080 Linnets, 880 Goldfinches, 180 Meadow Pipits, 140 Starlings and 75 Chaffinches made up the bulk of the rest of the numbers, with the paltry totals of just 5 Siskins, 3 Reed Buntings, 2 Bramblings and a Redpoll indicating that it was numbers rather than variety that were to the fore. In a brisk westerly it was particularly uninspiring on the ground: single Yellow-browed Warblers were either side of Southwell and lingering odds and sods at the Bill included 2 Firecrests, a Merlin and a Whinchat but the general feel was for new arrivals being few and far between. Three Balearic Shearwaters and an Arctic Skua passed by on the sea the Bill.

There was some exciting news today of the first hit on our MOTUS receiver which, very pertinently considering events this month, involved a Yellow-browed Warbler. Due to various logistical difficulties we don't yet know the bird's full history but the gist of things is that it was first tagged in the Amsterdam area of The Netherlands early in the month; it remained in that vicinity for a few days before moving southwest where it was logged passing several receivers in the Rotterdam area. The logging over the Obs was at 21:15 on 13th - fuller details of this birds movements once we can interrogate the system more fully tomorrow:


Back to today and, as has become the case so often at this time of year (...it didn't always used to be like this), the most impressive feature of the day was the multitude of pigeons overhead - often in multi-layered flocks like they are here:


One thing that was quite conspicuous when the flocks were low enough to be able to properly scrutinize them was the apparent proportion of Stock Doves involved in the passage:


This flock of c218 pigeons were low enough that we can enlarge the original photograph enough to be able to fully resolve the Stock Doves - there were 27 in the flock which is 12% of the total. Were there 12% Stock Doves in all the flocks that made up the day's total of 9000 'Wood Pigeons' logged? - frankly, nobody's got a clue. It'll be 9000 Wood Pigeons that are logged in our official records but if 12% - c1000 - were actually Stock Doves then that's a pretty crappy bit of 'science' we were engaged in © Martin Cade