After half a dozen very poor visits to Fly Flatts and starting to get disillusioned I very nearly headed for Leeshaw this afternoon but the little voice in my head said, " get thissen back to Fly Flatts man, its got to get better", and get better it did.
Its very hard when you watch a patch near daily, and most times twice daily, when it stops producing to the point where you get to thinking I,ll have to move on, but as always, if you stick it out and keep bashing away at it the rewards will start to come back which is what happened today.
On arrival the wind had increased from this morning to SW>5 gusting 6 but decreasing slightly as the watch went on but the sun still shone and the sky was blue.
I was intent of mainly sky watching this afternoon having checked all the west banking this morning so a walk to the SW corner, then around the boat yard before positioning the car so I could stand in the shelter of the tailgate away from the wind.
All was looking quiet in the skies with nothing moving and at near 1515 hrs I was ready to call it a day until a scan to the south, well beyond Slade, found a long thin string of black cotton in the blue sky, GEESE. At this time I guessed them to be over Mount Tabor or even Pellon heading west but as I was getting the messages out they turned more NW so getting a bit nearer to me although very distant. Suddenly the dogs started barking and looking round having picked up the calls of the geese before I did, which is hardly surprising with my ears, but I soon started to hear them as they passed over Cold Edge area and away over the west ridge about half way between me and Stoodley Pike.
Minutes after they had gone from sight the dogs chimed up again with more geese calls much nearer and from the east but though I could hear them plain I could ,nt locate them until I saw the dogs looking straight up above us and there they were, a skein of nearly 300 Pinks but mega high and hard to see in the bright sky. Even with the scope down at 150mm and the tripod at full slant the skein was too big to get in the frame and then too small and distant by the time I could get them in but good enough for a count of 277.
Three more skeins followed at the same height and from the east and must have passed over Soil Hill and Ogden then disappeared over the west ridge >NW.
After that all was quiet but what an amazing 30 minutes with :-
5 Skeins of 87, 190, 230. 277, 242. A total of 1026 birds, give or take a goose or two.
Who was it said that Fly Flatts is poor in a SW wind ???
BS