Sunday, April 29, 2007

Busy day





Double click on the Dunnock for full value - it's not cropped.

Started off at Kettleness where there where there was a small westerly passage of Common Scoter (84 in the first hour in 7 groups) and a small easterly passage of terns, 13 Sandwich tern and 1 Commic (most likely an Arctic but I got on to it rather late). 4 Manxies went west, but that was all of note at sea - other than the pickup of Gannet, Kittiwake and auks since last week - loads more. A cold northerly breeze was discouraging (to me) so after an hour and a half I went for a walk around. The Stonchats were still there and very territorial, a Wheatear, Rockit singing, and new since last week 6 Common Whitethroat and 1 Lesser Whitethroat singing.

Scaling Dam had a Greenshank, Common Sandpiper, LRPs, 4 House Martin and a singing Garden Warbler. 2 Wigeon and 3 Goldeneye remain. Of interest 300 Black-headed Gulls suddenly appeared and there was but one or two full adults amongst them.

Nothng much of note at home but at the Danby Moors Centre a fledged Blackbird, possible Marsh Tit, but lawn mowing activities flushed it, and very nice Orange Tips.

3 comments:

darrell j prest said...

excellent stuff as usual.and a fellow joanna newsom fan!! and the seventh seal all good stuff

darrell

Alastair said...

Have been trying to put a music player on the blog + playlist as I have this thing about music and birding - in the Dungeness days we used to have bird / music combinations when seawatching e.g. Arctic Skua to Atrocity Exhibition (Joy Division) would be considerably better than Pom to no music ... Sampling has taken this to new extremes and I am a big fan of Kate Bush's Ariel with the wonderful Blackbird and Woodpigeon samples (2nd disk).

Yes I do like Joanna Newsom, the lyrics are just so evocative and she's so quirky. Well good - what would be a good song / bird combination (a vis mig effort rather than the sea would seem right).

darrell j prest said...

i love my birding music combo's...at the moment joanna's 'only skin' seem to fit the moors so perfectly or vis mig as in both you never know what come's next or isolation by joy division when its crap 'mother i tried please belive me'....anyway slumberland awaits

darrell