Tuesday 31 October 2017

Banstead Woods, 31st October 2017

I was alone this time for another Hither Field skywatch. The main feature for much of the morning was a quite impressive push of Redwings, coming through in flocks of up to 100 birds, allowing for comfortably paced and accurate counting leading to a total of 2,500 in three hours and 45 minutes. It felt as though it might turn out to be a blank morning for Hawfinches but three birds did fly over between 09:00 and 09:30. There were some other nice totals for the day's entry, with 560 Fieldfares, 410 Starlings, nine redpolls, 13 Siskins, five Pied Wagtails, two Grey Herons, the Red Kite and five Mallards being some of the highlights. Two Blackbirds seemed to be migrants and a few Song Thrushes around my watchpoint behaved as though they were in transit.