The strong cold wind that blew yesterday, continued today, even stronger if anything, and the grey skies with spits of rain made it feel decidedly like early March again.
The highlight of the day came as I walked into work this morning. I had my hat pulled down over my ears to combat the cold wind, but walking through the College Grounds I still managed to hear the sweet summery sound of my first WILLOW WARBLER (83,59) of the year, my favourite summer song, all I need now is some summer weather - and that's promised for tomorrow :-)
As for this afternoon, well it was dismal! My normal route over to the lakes and scrub, then on to the Pub Field, Tree Nursery and Migrant Alley gave me little inspiration. Even most of the CHIFFCHAFFS had stopped singing, the grey day and cold wind has probably put the priority of the day on foraging for food.
One bird of interest I did see, was a Chiffchaff, with a cream collar and face, but the collar only went round the right half of its neck and throat, its left side was as a normal chiffchaff, I thought I'd found something good at first :-)
Back on the subject of the Willow warbler, the one seen this morning was 3 days earlier than the mean arrival date for the ten years, but much later than last years earliest ever Willow Warbler, that arrived on the 26th march.
8 comments:
Well done with the Willow Warbler :)
It has been wet, windy and miserable here but could be worse, I was looking back at my records and on the night of April 6th 2008 we had heavy snow here, hopefully that won't happen tomorrow night!!
Songbird,
We certainly don't want any of that!!!
By the way the Songthrush was still sitting tight ;-)
Well, we are told, that there will be a nice summer, tomorrow. Let us believe it!
Hi Warren.
I agree with you about the Willow Warbler, apart from a great find, I too love their song. As I said on Alan Woodcocks blog, it always reminds me of a sunny summers day.
I definitively hope you will get a nice spring day tomnorrow... Nice addition this willow ;-) One I would not see here but maybe in France this summer ;-)
It's amazing to me that some of these spring arrivals seemingly cope so well with some of our wintery spring weather!
I hope to be hearing some more warbler singing myself in the near future!
Snap, with Willow Warbler, Warren. I had my first (2) yesterday, but mine were later than last year.
Same here...Willow Warbler was singing at Shenstone today.
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