Sunday 31st October 2021.
Happy Halloween everyone. A really stormy day today with very strong winds and heavy rain throughout the morning, but eventually it gave way to brighter conditions although the wind hardly dropped. There was the obligatory storm damage with trees down and big branches blocking roads around the Portsmouth area and even my moth box blew over and smashed the rain guard, which I am really angry about.
Though I never really ventured out to do any birding, I did have a few moths in my kitchen that I eventually placed outside including one Common Plume and a Brown House Moth. The windy conditions had me awake at 6am and not being able to fall back to sleep, I decided to get up early. It would take a brave guy to go birding out in that weather, but some people did and a few sightings were had by a few hardy souls.
Yesterday’s Great Grey Shrike was still at Backley Common today and a few seabirds were noted, mostly Kittiwakes and a few Divers off Selsey Bill this morning, along with a Great Skua (the same bird that has been offshore here most of this week?). Birding pal, Geoff Farwell, texted me last night that he took a drive to Farley Mount in Winchester for a spot of birding and had the following sightings: 7 Common Buzzards, 3 Red Kite, Goshawk, Raven, Marsh Tit, 3 Stonechat, 9 Brambling, 10 Siskin, 50 Linnets and 2 Redwings.
I was checking the Lazee Birders Whatsapp site when I noticed that one of the birders took some excellent photos of the juvenile Ring Ouzel at Leadenhall yesterday. I write this as a bird I saw when we went to Leadenhall last weekend, looked identical to the bird that was photographed; though it quickly disappeared and was never seen again by either Andy or myself. After dropping Andy off at his house yesterday, he got itchy feet and went off to Petersfield Lake to hopefully see the long staying Ruddy Shelduck. Fortunately for him, the bird was still present along with a Kingfisher and a Red Kite and rounded off his afternoon birding with a trip down to Thorney Island and picked up a pair of Marsh Harriers. I would like to thank both Christine Whiffen and Dave Hutton for their superb photos and allowing me to place them on my blog.
Arguably, the biggest rarity in the UK currently is the Varied Thrush on Papa Westray, in the Orkneys. Only the second ever seen in the UK, the bird has spent the last few days in some lucky persons garden and has not moved since, enabling the most dedicated 'twitchers' to see this gorgeous North American Thrush. I have provided a link to see the bird itself from Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/584473477/videos/1073342213406511/
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