Still remarkably mild but lots of cloud and pretty windy on Saturday, whilst Sunday was a perfect autumn day, very calm and bright. During the working week Dave Burgess had found a Great Grey Shrike on Blackdown. There had been a mini-influx of them and several sites in the South now held these birds but I was particularly keen to see the Blackdown shrike with it being so local.
Arriving at 7.30, it was still very gloomy, 2
Redwings and a Lesser Redpoll had flown over and a handful of
Goldcrest were calling, but I was struggling to see a bird of any description. It was shortly after 8am when I was down in the valley bottom that I saw the
Great Grey Shrike distantly on top of one of the pines, virtually a silhouette. I walked onto the top path noting a couple of
Dartford Warblers and met Dave and Jonathan who had the Shrike in the scope in a pine, it then favoured the top of a couple of shrubs half way up the valley slope and at one point caught what was probably a Pygmy Shrew and downed it in one - in an Owl-like fashion. A couple of
Siskin and
4 Brambling flew over calling and
2 Fieldfare landed in one of the pines. The weather was worsening and rain beckoned so I headed home.
Sunday was similar but the weather much improved although I didn't quite take full advantage of the clocks going back and was on site before 7am (8am yesterdays time !) . I quickly found the
Great Grey Shrike again in the same bush half way up the Western slope of the valley where it stayed for at least half an hour, other birds seen were
4 Redwing, 2 Brambling, 1 Firecrest and
3 Skylark. It was fairly quiet otherwise with the notable difference to last week being the clear-out of all the thrushes and no Stonechats left on site, although up to 4
Dartford Warblers were present.
At home later in the morning both
GreyWagtail and
Pied Wagtail were present plus
3 Crossbill flew South. The build up of
Woodpigeons were notable with probably 200+ passing West in about 30 minutes - I imagine in about 10 days there maybe thousands seen if like previous years.
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| Devouring a Shrew on Saturday |
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| Remaining equally distant on Sunday |
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| Add caption |
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| Dartford Warblers doing well here at the moment |
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| Regular Kestrel |
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