If you don,t like geese switch off now !
A bright start to the morning at Fly Flatts but rapidly deteriorating with low cloud from the west bringing drizzle and rain by 1000 hrs.
The afternoon at Leeshaw was clear with fog on the moor tops slowly moving in but managed to last the watch out.
Fly Flatts was quiet but an early alert from PT, my Horton Bank Top lookout centre, text to say there was a skein of Pinks over Shelf which boosted morale a bit, thanks for that Peter. This coincided with DCB/HC at Oxenhope getting a skein over their watch point from the direction of Leeshaw reservoir. The excitement was short lived with the rest of the morning very poor and just down to 5 species found.
With grapevine messages from Calderdale reporting several skeins of geese moving west I headed to Leeshaw in the afternoon expecting them to come through the gap between the low cloud to the North and South of me.
It was,nt long before the first skein came into view coming directly over the Oxenhope watch point and over the reservoir leaving directly West. A call from JL to say he was getting them over Soil Hill and also from Ashley, the finder of the Wryneck, saying he was getting them over Skircoat Green.
Suddenly Pinks were coming through in bus loads with skein after skein all on the same flight path leaving >W. Within 30 minutes 6 skeins had gone over with a total of 719 geese, an amazing sight ,and to me, my favourite sight and sound of British birding.
Not much time for any other birding but Herrings, and LBBs were present among the small gulls.
FLY FLATTS
6 Red Grouse
1 Stonechat
9 Herring.............>NW
86 Starling...........>NW
1 Kestrel
1 Buzzard
LEESHAW
719 Pink Footed geese... >W 135, 172, 80, 110, 160, 62.
4 Herring gull
6 LBB gull
c 100 small gull 75% Common
2 Cormorant.
Dave Barker and me were reminiscing on the phone about vis mig days gone by and I reminded him of the remark he use to make on Bonfire night. He used to say " I wonder what happens to Redwings in the war torn skies of England on Bonfire Night". We used to wonder how many of the night fliers would get shot down with fireworks.
BS