At long last I shoe-horned a couple of hours for a short birding walk - tonic for the soul ! - Been flat out for the last month with seemingly no time and fighting a summer bug, which just seems to be abating. I had a couple of hours this morning before going to pick Adie up from Heathrow - get this, when I was 12, I think I had been abroad once, a family holiday to Italy when I was around 9 or 10 - This was probably Adie's 50th plane journey but the first unaccompanied on her own (BA have stopped doing assisted minors) she was returning from a week in Sweden to stay with a school-friend who is there for the Summer !
Blackdown was the venue having not been there since the Nightjar walk in mid-June. A lot of cloud cover with some impending drizzle but no fog ! - I didn't really have high expectations as its a little early for migration and breeding is at its tail-end.
Over the course of a couple of hours I was surprised to bump into two or three flocks of birds which contained a number of warblers and some of these will be dispersing birds.
Dartford Warblers held good numbers, I probably saw at least 7 birds with a couple of immatures, signalling some successful breeding.2
Stonechats were seen just entering that messy moult plumage. In total probably 35-40
Chiffchaffs, 2 Willow Warblers, 1 Blackcap, 1 Whitethroat and most surprising 1
Garden Warbler. The best of anything else were 2
Crossbill flying over calling. Numerous
Linnets were around the site and plenty of the commoner species including
Goldcrests, Long-tailed Tits, Treecreeper, Great-Spooted and Green Woodpecker.
A decent couple of hours before facing M25 hell.
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| Overcast and murky early morning view |
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| Dartford Warbler - male post-breeding lost some of the shine |
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| They seem to have done well on the site |
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| an immature Dartford Warbler |
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| A young Roe Deer |
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| A lot of bracken in the understorey |
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| Stonechat |
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