GEDSER - 31st August

A beautiful, calm, sunny, hot day produced an increase in the birds in the nets (at least for the first few hours of the day anyway) as we ended up with 75 new birds including the first Firecrest of the autumn and another juvenile Red-backed Shrike; the remaining birds in the total had a much more ‘Septembery’ feel to them being made up of increased numbers of Robins, Dunnocks, Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs which are starting to replace other Warbler and Flycatcher species.

                Overhead it was pretty quiet in the calmer conditions with c30 Sparrowhawks and several Kestrels along with single Honey Buzzard and Marsh Harrier although the majority of the birds were seen to the west of the station, often over Gedser town with several of the Sparrowhawks heading due west over the garden towards town.   Five Crossbills, several Siskins and good numbers of Tree Pipits were also over the garden.

                The afternoon was also unremarkable with an adult male Peregrine over the fields to the north of Gedser the only different bird of note while a decent flock of 40+ Yellow Wagtails at Birkemose included at least two really smart adult male thunbergi.

 

Firecrest - fantastic birds!

Chiffchaff

Yellow Wagtails (flava's)

Marsh Harrier