A couple more

Manage to bag some Manxies and a couple of Arctic skuas this afternoon.

79 for the year = 68.7%

Happy days

Bushveld

Oops

This turned up on Reg's patch this morning... and he's on holiday

Sorry Reg.

bit of movement through the crease

Its been a fairly lacklustre spring hereabouts however I am struggling on adding year ticks where I can. Having missed out on verifying Geller's garganey, I managed to turn up a fine brace of tufted ducks on the lake here, plus common sandpiper too. The addition of collared dove  and siskin, plus a smattering of seawatch action in the form of puffin and bonxie keeps thing moving along steadily.

Just shy of 100 species up by mid May is pretty average hereabouts - all to play for in the autumn!

Drip feed of year ticks and the spotted flycatchers are home

See what happens... you don't stop by the blog for a while and suddenly people are overtaking you left, right and centre.

I'd dropped to third in the rankings... FFS!

Still... that was soon remedied when I totted up the recent trickle of year ticks, including a small flock of whimbrel (16 of 'em) feeding in a field near the lake.

Whimbrel on patch... lovely!

Most of the usual spring suspects are now on the list, including whitethroat, sedge warbler and gropper (which I missed last year... so good to get). My spotted flys arrived back last week, and a jay from the car today was the latest addition... taking me up to 81 species, or 93.46% and back into the lead.

Long way to December though, and with swift the only semi-cert I can think of that I have left, it's going to be a long seven months!

Crazy times!

A bizarre week on patch with a fly-by Red-rumped Swallow today, a Great Bustard in off the sea on the 4th and several Pom Skuas through on the sea. A quite ridiculous 90% in what is looking like it could be my best year ever

A starter for 10...

This time of year there's not many days you get out onto the patch and score a big fat 10 species for the year!  including a full fat patch tick.

What a beautiful morning, nice calm conditions and hazy sunshine, it wasn't snowing, raining or blowing a gale, so I made the most of it and spent a solid 4 hrs on the patch.

Best of the bunch and a first for the patch were the two sum. plum. black-tailed godwits accompanied with a similar sum. plum. ruff.  The drake gadwall was also a quality patch bird.  Admittedly the rest were either returning migrants, whitethroat, willow warbler, house martin, redpoll etc or just regular birds that I hadn't caught up on this year yet, e.g greylag and sparrowhawk.

The good news is that this brings my tally up to 75 species and 65.22% of my total.

Ahead of Seppy… which is where I intend to remain!

Happy days

Bushveld

Reg's find

Reg found one of these on Sunday… outside my house!

Photographed from the office!