now that's what i call vis mig...and a patch tick

Looking out the window at 8.40am, I gradually became aware that there were serious numbers of thrushes on the move. Scanning with bins, I could see that there were thrushes all across the bay, all moving west towards ross and toe head. For the next 3 hours there was a continuous movement of birds over the bay - I did a few counts, and birds were moving through at approx 250 birds per minute. If you multipy this up, the numbers start to get pretty amayzing! Being a bit conservative, we'll call it 1,000 birds in 5 minutes, or 12,000 thrushes in an hour - the rate appeared pretty constant for the next 2 hours, so that's 24,000 thrushes. Even if we take half that number for the third hour (wasn't watching so intently, but the rate hadn't dropped much), that's another 6,000 birds, making 30,000 birds in the first 3 hours of day (not including the first 30 mins of daylight, when I wasn't watching). Wow!

So what were they all? I'd say that the vast majority, (80%?) were redwing, with 10% song thrush and 10% fieldfare - so thats approximately 24,000 redwing, 3,000 song thrush and 3,000 fieldfare. Wow!

In amongst the thrushes, there was other stuff too - a minimum of 300 snipe over, (largest flock was 23), 275 lapwing (largest flock 24), 150 starlings, 7 golden plover, 15 black-tailed godwits and another untagged red kite, in off the sea heading towards castlefreke. Wow!

News from Galley of a woodcock had me itching to get out for a bit, so drove up to the top fields, flushing another woodcock on the way - it sat on the wall 2 feet away, eye-balling me - full-fat patch tick! Goldcrest there too was new for the year. A quick boot of the top stubble fields revealed a flock of 20 skylarks, plus c.30 chaffinches, including a brambling, (one I missed last year), plus a raven. Wow! It was feckin freezing out though, so we didn't linger. Thrushes were still coming over in dribs and drabs, with the odd lapwing now and again. The 3 buzzards were still booting around too.

Back home, and a squizz at the lake revealed another year tick - 3 coot! My biggest ever count - in fact you could even call it a flock! Wow! Aythya numbers had also swollen to 7 tufted ducks, the male pochard and the female scaup. Crazy scenes! Quite a morning, all in all (75)!!