1515 hrs and bright and breezy at Fly Flatts with 60 % cloud cover with some blue sky and too much sunshine on a brisk W>5. Its amazing how this venue changes day to day with all the weekends birds gone and hardly a bird seen for the first 30 minutes.
I started off with another bag of Njger seed down to keep up my system of 2 bags per week since the springtime which I will continue to do until late October but still not a Twite in sight although the Mipits and Wheatears hang around the area so I dont feel its wasted and at £2 a bag its keeping Wilkinsons in business. To begin with the whole area seemed void of birds with the Willow Warbler tree empty along with the shoreline and water, even the geese had disappeared along with the Barnacles and were nowhere to be seen.
As always with Fly Flatts, a bit of concentration and careful scanning pays off and soon I was starting to get a list together. Birders at places like Fairburn Ings dont realize how lucky they are to walk about surrounded with birds whilst here it can be a matter of 360 degs scanning to find a single species.
A distant Peregrine flew over the Nab whilst the resident Kestrel started to work the west bank . As I got to the NW corner Wheatears started to appear moving >S along the bottom of the bank with a count of 12 before I got back to the SW corner.
No waders today with the water lashing over the edges and starting to flood the south banking although a few days mainly dry will soon let it drop enough to get some shoreline showing.
Suddenly the sky started to come to life with firstly a Curlew over high and NW then Swallows and Swifts moving through, the latter coming over in waves throughout the rest of the watch.
So after a frightening start , as most times, something always turns up to get your head in order for your next visit.
Present
1 Peregrine
2 Carrion Crow
6 Linnet
1 Kestrel
Vis Mig
123 Swift..............................>SW
47 Swallow..........................>W
1 Curlew..............................>NW
12 Wheatear........................blogging
BS