High Hopes

High hopes dashed! Once again a story of unrewarded effort, unrequited dreams. Out before 6am, and four hours on the patch produced one single year tick, an invisible Yellow Wagtail. Hardly very satisfying given the time put in, and the feeling that a change in the weather could have brought me gazillions of new birds for the year. Once again the weather was too nice. Last week is was not nice at all, extremely cold and unfavourable for migration. Today they mostly sailed right over the top of us. I say mostly as there was a scattering of Wheatears across the Flats. As a number of us were stood around moaning, one of them came and landed near us. It hopped around on the ground for a bit and then perched on a log, thus:

Well that's nice. I wonder if it will stay there? Binoculars off, camera strap discarded, the slow shuffle began. So far so good.

Essentially it never moved, even with three of us gradually converging on it. I got extremely close, possibly closer to a Wanstead Wheatear than I have ever been, and thus the morning turned into one that goes into the annals as a success. Eventually the bird moved off of its own accord, and James, Tony and I got up and dusted ourselves off. Which is when we found Bob surveying this silly scene with some amusement, three grown men lying prostrate on the ground worshiping Wheatear. So in summary there were not many birds, but there was one bird.