My Blog - Jeff Clarke

The Big Push

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All images unless otherwise stated © Jeff Clarke 2011

On Saturday 15th October I left my house well before dawn. The starry sky promised to turn into a stunningly blue autumn day. I arrived in a Hale village as the first glimmers of dawn were stealing over the eastern horizon. I headed for the watchpoint and the flitting forms of Blackbirds, uttering the odd "chuck" and minor alarm call, suggested there had been a significant arrival overnight. This was a good omen for the planned migration watch. After a  twenty minute hike I reached my favourite Hale Head Watchpoint and prepared for what I hoped would be a momentus migration of birds through the peninsula.

I was joined by Rob Cockbain and Kath Edwards just as the first onslaught of migrants began to pulse through. As so often on these 'blue sky' days the birds were pretty high. The first to show were Redwings at first in small parties. Shortly after the first trickle of Woodpigeons began to pass over. Over the next hour this became a torrent of birds. Three species dominated the action, the aforementioned Redwings and Woodpigeons, strongly backed up by Fieldfares.

Although the Woodpigeon count was fairly accurate I know we missed many flocks of the Scandinavian thrushes, some of which were so high they were almost invisible even with binoculars. We also missed lots of finches as they were engulfed by the mass of other birds. We eventually switched to another watchpoint where we were able to pick up the finches. Dominated by Chaffinches but a fair sprinkling of other birds joined them, notably a tight group of three Lapland Bunting that scooted by. By the end of the watch we had recorded a remarkable 25,370 birds

The full results of one of my most memorable Hale Head migration watches can be viewed on the Trektellen website where you can also see returns from other migration watchpoints around Europe.

Postcript: I've had several more visits in recent days, not as spectacular but still superb. I've added a few extra pictures from these visits.