With Curlews and Oyks already reported its time to gen up on the spring migration birds, especially waders of which we get very little experience of around here. With fly overs you may have seconds to pick out a distinguishing feature before its gone forever and classed as a : cud av bin : so its important to know those wing bar and rump markings unless you,re experienced enough to get it on call which I,m definitely not, bird calls and me have never got on and nowadays, if Im lucky enough to even hear the call, I usually look in the wrong direction.
Passerines in flight are much easier after a few sessions of visible migration watching as you can usually pick them out on jizz alone even if they,re silhouetted .
Its not easy getting knowledged up from books before the event but I tend to stick to the birds Im mostly likely to see and if you get an oddball its a matter of quick note taking and then look in the book or better still get a photo.
On of my problems of looking through a book is staying awake but thats another story.
With several reports of a possible drought this year we should be over run with waders, says he hopefully.
A slow start to the weather today but the sun eventually got through by midday but still the SW>5 continued.
Temperature in the garage was up to 14 deg this p.m. but bird sightings over the area remained poor.
BS