Cooling Marshes, Kent, 7th December 2014

Thursday 9 August 2012

Summer's swift exit

So here it is...the moment that UK Summer 2012 finally sodded off after months of sulking about:

3rd August 2012, approx 4.21pm, Seaford Head, East Sussex...

Yep, that smudgy speck on the fence post was my first out-going 'autumn' Wheatear of the year. I took it last week while I was down on the south coast helping with the annual RSPB Kittiwake 'date with nature' (more on that soon). By my reckoning Seaford Head (just along a bit from Beachy Head) is a good spot for migrants and I purposefully had a quick walk up there to check for some. It was about 15 seconds til I spotted this one flitting about on the cliff edge. I totally love Wheatears, I know they're a pretty common passage migrant but there's still something exotic about them. They're not flashy or anything, they just get in and do the business. Every time I see one I get a buzz, that day last autumn when I counted 19 in one field on Sheppey was a particularly good day! Ha. So, this girl (IDd it as female from the brief views as it skipped around to avoid walkers) has a long way to go...couldn't help but smile as it flicked up on to the post and cocked its head towards the sea, no doubt weighing up what were fairly breezy south-westerlies at the time. There's something special about seeing a bird you know is literally just about to start a long journey south. My first Wheatear of the year came in on March 17th, a cracking mint male back in Kent. To me that signalled the coming seasons more than anything else really, so watching this one go feels similar. But that's ok because everyone knows that Autumn migration > Spring migration, right?!

Aside from the this, there were clues everywhere really. House Martins hung about the cliffs in busy, buzzing  flocks and just before I spotted the Wheatear, I watched four swallows jink their way low and south other the waves at Splash Point. Up on Seaford Head there was a Whitethroat still looking pretty content among the scrubby bushes and a little further on, a Meadow Pipit gave confiding views with a beak full of insects. This individual may or not be making any long journey soon (as I understand, a small proportion of our breeding mipits do migate south, along with northern birds on passage) but still looks good:


Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis)

Back in London now and the number of Swifts darting across the evening skies dropped off massively this week, certainly by Monday (6th). There are still a few about, ones and twos, but otherwise those amazing scree-ming stars of summer are something to look forward to once again.


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