A bright clear morning from the start with blue skies and a slight southerly breeze.Rain by 1700hrs.
Unlike yesterday when I only got the second wave of birds coming over mid morning, birds were moving from first light with a better variety of species.
Meadow Pipits showed the largest numbers followed by Swallows and Chaffinch. A few Goldfinch flew over along with Skylark and Alba Wagtail and my first real moving Woodpigeons of the year were the last over late morning. All species were heading >S and the majority of the movers were to the SE of the garage in the greyer cloud preffering it to the clear blue sky.
The highlight of the day was a Buzzard over the mill chimney >S towards the Northowram end of Shibden Valley at 0955, I saw it from the car park but by the time Id dashed in for the camera it had gone, why do raptors always do that, one minute they,re there and the next they,re gone? You can see the position of the mill chimney over the garage in the photo on the right.
The only other thing of note was a squirrel that came across the car park right into the garage doorway not a yard away from me then shot back and over a garden wall, must have been looking for nuts but all ours are the type that screw onto bolts.
Rough count to and at work :-
1Buzzard......................................>S
48 Swallow..................................>S
180 Meadow Pipit.......................>S
2 Skylark....................................>S
15 Chaffinch...............................>S
12 Goldfinch...............................>S
87 Woodpigeons........................>S
BS