Garden Warbler

Garden Warbler - last year's '5 birds in one day' was exceptional. Typically we're lucky to get one in spring and I'm never too surprised to get none. This morning's bird was a real show-off. Probably too cold to care that I was standing feet away pointing a camera at it!

 

It was bitterly cold at 6am this morning following a night of clear skies. Fortunately the wind had dropped, but that did nothing to prevent the loss of feeling in my fingers. I walked from Foxholes to Sandy Bay without seeing a bird, but by the time I'd turned around and started walking back the sun was stirring things into life. The line of flowering Blackthorn along the cliff-top path yielded a singing male Lesser Whitethroat, my first Garden Warbler of the year, 1 Willow Warbler and 3 Blackcap. Just as things were picking up I had to get back to get ready for work.

Yesterday, in far from ideal windy conditions, I recorded 7 Whimbrel, 1 Ringed Plover, 1 Common Tern, 2 Turnstone, 1 Redstart and 1 Blackcap. The Redstart was a female bird in exactly the same spot that Nick had one the day before - surely the same bird. It was incredibly difficult to get close to and nigh on impossible to photograph. A flash of fiery-red tail and gone.