Back to work today, so the last patch visit of October was an afternoon affair, and for the 6th day running it was dull and cloudy with spots of drizzle in the air, that in itself makes the birds less easy to find, but today that was compounded by the number of SPARROWHAWKS that were hunting in the area. The first was seen this morning, I hadn't even walked out of the back door when a male whizzed past at knee height, hoping to catch an early finch on the feeders.

This afternoon my visit to the lakes and scrubby woods was overshadowed by 3 more Sprawks, 2 being female, the male with them may have been the one I saw early this morning. They circled over the woods and made several dashes into the canopy, flushing out numerous BLACKBIRDS, THRUSHES, WOODPIGEONS and 3 FIELDFARES, whilst the ROBINS, DUNNOCKS and Tits were heard giving their alarm calls as the dived deeper into cover. Needless to say, I wasn't going to find anything here today, and with only 3 MALLARD and 5 MOORHEN seen on the water, I made my way over to the Tree Nursery, where blow me down overhead was a big female Sprawk, not one of the two seen over the Scrubby woods, this was a much bigger one!  Once again I had to move on, so the Greenhouse Complex was my next visit, I walked the boundary hedgerow, and all was very quiet, I then saw the reason why fly from a fence post, a KESTREL, this flew up and gave it's alarm call, ki ki ki ,  the reason for that was the BUZZARD that was going over low and slow!!

Well, it wasn't my day, with all those raptors about, I was on a looser,  the light was going fast having lost an hour in the evening now the clocks have gone back, so I decided to go home and watch the garden feeders for 40 mins, maybe something will turn up there to salvage the day, how wrong I was, just ten minutes into watching the garden this little bugger (below) comes in and took a GREENFINCH, I gave up on the bird watching after that!!!!!!

Yet another Sprawk, this time he got his finch meal - a poor old Greenfinch

I'm getting fewer and fewer Greenfinch's in the garden now, however it's NOT the Sprawk thats at the heart of the problem, thats down to the surrounding poor habitat that the farmers and land owners keep degrading   :-(

October went out with a whimper in the end, but for the majority of it, especially early on, there was some good birding to be had, the Whinchat on the 4th was only the second recorded in October, and all those passage Wheatears were a brilliant sight, with the 8 seen together on the 6th being a peak count for my patch. Early Brambling, a Coot, and a couple of Reed Bunting sightings, as well as the arrival of the Redwing and Fieldfares all made for an exciting period, while the two patch ticks, Crossbill and Great Skua, put the cherry and icing on the cake!   :-)  The total species recorded this month ended on 69, the second best October for the ten years, 8 species behind the best October tally though.  The ten year combined species total for October, now stands at 93, with the addition of the Crossbill and Skua.

The last full patch walk for October was, as expected, taken place in some dismal conditions, just like recent visits! Low cloud and and persistent drizzle made it tough looking for birds, the day barely got light at all. A consequence of this was a low tally of species seen, just 40 in all.

The highlight of the walk, if any, was seeing a flock of mixed SKYLARK and MEADOW PIPITS in the sheep pasture at Migrant Alley, altogether around 18 birds, which is a good number here! I wont bother going into the rest of the sightings today, as you might as well read yesterdays post!

Instead I thought I'd put up some stats  (yawwwwn )  of the last dates that the Summer species were seen this year, compared to the latest and average leaving dates over the ten year recording period. Below are the species that have been recorded in 5 or more years out of the ten.
                                   LATEST   AVERAGE    THIS YEAR

• Hobby                 7/10            20/9              29/9
• Common Tern      25/8            4/8                25/8
• Turtle Dove         14/9            28/8              14/9
• Cuckoo               5/8              1/7                14/6 
• Swift                    2/10           28/8               15/9
• Swallow               20/10         9/10               9/10
• Sand Martin         3/10           16/9               18/9
• House Martin       22/10         8/10               12/10
• Yellow Wagtail     19/10         23/9                29/9
• Redstart               24/9           6/9                  9/9
• Whinchat             10/10         18/9                4/10
• Wheatear             23/10         1/10                9/10
• Sedge Warbler     26/9           15/9                22/9
• Reed Warbler       22/9           2/9                  22/9 
• Less.Whitethroat   21/9          9/9                  9/9
• Com.Whitethroat   21/9          10/9               21/9
• Garden Warbler     14/9          23/8               24/8
• Willow warbler       21/9         31/8               19/9
• Spot. Flycatcher     19/9          31/8               11/9

You can see that this year,  16 of the 19 summer species hung around later than the average date, 2 left bang on the average date and 1 left earlier than the average date. Four species were seen on their latest dates this year   :-)

As the weather at the moment is limiting photo opportunities, I have dug out an old favorite of mine  :-)

Little Owl ( Jan 2009)