Back in the saddle

I always find it hard to get back to the patch after a trip away, especially to somewhere with lots and lots of tropical birds. Central and South America is the worst in terms of come down. The magic of air travel is also a curse... On Tuesday you can be in a jungle seeing Tanagers and Hummingbirds. On Wednesday morning you can be back on your local patch seeing..... Exactly. I tend to have to leave it a few days to kind of sober up before venturing out locally again, and this time it took 11 days - I'd been in Mexico. Partly this was as I was busy the first weekend, partly it was that the weather was rubbish, but mostly it was just apathy.

I finally made it out on a beautiful autumn morning and felt glad to be alive. Birds were few and far between as often happens on clear days, but it was very nice and I remembered how lucky I am to live with this on my doorstep. It's not the coast but it could be a lot worse. A lot worse. So I've been poking about, mostly vismigging, and today in quite murky weather it finally came good. 

The anticipated Brambling duly brayed just after 7am and continued to do so for another quarter of an hour. I mean it may have been several birds moving through, who can say, but  depsite being a few minutes apart the calls always seemed to come from the same place so I have put it down as just one bird. It got better though, a lot better, as just before 8am I picked up an unfamiliar call but one that I had hoped I might hear. Hawfinch! Where was it???! There! Over the Model Airfield, curving over the Skylark area and over one of the copses, calling all the way, a slightly underwhelming metallic spik whereas really this species should give a deep booming call like a Bittern or something. It was still pretty murky so the views were less wonderful than I had hoped, but on size and shape it looked very decent. Marco and Jim had just left me and so annoyingly missed it, possibly as I had just asked them to stop chatting quite so much as I was trying to listen out for .....Hawfinch. The birding Gods up to mischief again? Maybe.... Regardless, calls are absolutely critical for VizMig and if I don't engage in the conversation and move down the path a little way, that's why.

The path from Brick Pits to Long Wood, almost impassable the last few months, has been re-established.

Gratifyingly but at the time unbeknownst to any of us, Bob's recorder had picked up Hawfinch about 40 minutes earlier from his garden. A first for local sound recording as far as I am aware, but not the first time that a bird recorded over his garden has subsequently been found on Wanstead Flats a short while later. I think exactly this scenario played out with one of the first Tree Pipits of the autumn as well. Obviously in one sense this is purely circumstantial, but then again this isn't criminal law and it makes perfect sense that a bird zipping over Chateau Bob could a few seconds later be over Wanstead Flats and decide that yes, this would make a good place for a pit stop. This is the first local Hawfinch since the irruption of 2017/18, and at this point is one of many London records. In other words it appears to be happening again. Last time I recorded the species five times, and it was at exactly this time of year - late October/early November - so hopefully there will be more.