Thursday, 15 October 2020

Fall of birds around Corton

With rain and north- easterly winds and the rain easing off Wednesday afternoon just nicely for me to have a quick look around the area, I started at Link's Road car park, no sign of the Brent Goose so I decided to go to the only area where news hadn't been forthcoming, Corton. It turned out to be a good choice but as drew into Corton Church carpark I could see both Rob M & his wife and Richard S looking in the far hedge they had beaten me to it! They had seen a LW and Goldcrests but little else, I decided to check the old sewage works where sadly the field just north of there was rapidly being developed, a flock of Herring Gulls in the field and little else so I walked back and in the hedge bordering the dyke. I was pleased to see a Lesser Redpoll (cabaret) moving about in the bush albeit heavily obscured. Back in the Churchyard, I saw the Lesser Whitethroat fly diagonally across the churchyard and it showed reasonably well in the back hedge. I could only see the head and the mantle, it was quite a sandy brown individual with no clear distinction between the crown and the mantle, from the picture afterwards I could see white in the tail, so James B's suggestion that it was a blythii Siberian Lesser Whitethroat seems entirely feasible, although I couldn't see any pale lores, the bird didn't call while I watched it moving about in the hedge and I only saw the head and mantle. Several Goldcrests were seen around 8. A tweet from Richard S. he struck the jackpot with finding a super Pallas's warbler along the western path of the new SW. Northing along the old Corton rail track, so I walked along the path heading west by the road and then took the western path south and joined Richard S in the south- west corner of the complex and LT Tits moved through and loosely associating with them I refound the excellent Pallas's Warbler with thick yellow supercilia, wing bars and lemon yellow rump, as I alaways a real gem of a bird. It moved wuickly right, around half way up the tree then see in the next tree then it disappeared. James B and Chris A arrived. I decided to check radar lodge road and the wooded walk along the edge of the Potters' field. Lots of Goldcrests seen including a flock of 8 flying in and several chacking Thrushes and "tseeping" Redwings, a mystery white underparted Warbler seen distantly along the north-west edge of Radar Lodge but it disappeared quickly.

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