Rain stops play

So the clocks went back, everybody gained an hour and dawn regressed back to ‘early’ ish. With this in mind, as well as knowledge of gradually worsening weather conditions a good kick about was on and popping this am.

The moth traps held 69 migrants consisting of mainly Rusty Dot Pearl and White-speck but numbers were bolstered with Rush Veneer, Dark Sword-grass, Pearly Underwing, L-album Wainscot and Delicate.

Fungi - but which one?!?

Post Lepidoptera madness garden rounds produced the Common Buzzard (in it’s tree), 1 White Wagtail, 1 Grey Wagtail, 1 Skylark, 1 Redwing, 1 Chiffchaff, 3 Goldcrest and 2 Raven while a Firecrest was still in Carreg Dhu -  basically not much was moving or new in. However the silence was shattered by a lovely Red-breasted Flycatcher twitch down in Holy Vale.

Fully Sibed. Red-breasted Flycatcher being typical.

After waiting and wandering for what seemed like months the bird zipped into some Sallows and showed pretty well on and off for a good 45minutes – acting proper Siberian and skulky. Just before we left a Yellow-browed Warbler popped into the same field of view as the ‘RB Flicker’ making a fairly novel combo (with other good ones the Lesser Yellowlegs + Northern Waterthrush this autumn and the epic Chimney Swift + Cliff Swallow combo a few years back).

My homage to 90's bird photography - grainy, grimey but ultimately atmospheric  (in my case just crap due to poor light, skill etc).

And a couple that actually reflect this lovely Red-breasted Flycatchers true colours.

Also in Holy Vale were a good 10+ Chifchaff and 6 Goldcrest with more in Higher Moors, but not many more! A hike up to Giants Castle on the off chance the Snow Bunting was chilling still proved fruitless but a Kestrel with baby rat was better than just a Kestrel I guess. The airfield was equally dead with single Wheatear (Northern) and 4 Skylark the only notable..no, the only birds seen.

Just wait till these Atlantic lows hit Wednesday... it’s going to get messy.