Caldene Fields Watchpoint 12-11-2008

Caldene Fields watch point, Low Moor,
South Bradford

An excellent morning !..... Not giving up yet!!!!

12th November 08 Watch 07.15 – 09.15
Weather: A dry start with 70% cloud cover with clearer skies to the E. Excellent ground visibility to beyond 11 miles with a F2 S/W wind and a temp of 5c. Around 08.10 cloud cover started to reduce to around 30% as the sun broke through creating fairly misty conditions to the E/S/E reducing visibility to around 5 miles.

Comments: Last night’s charts and weather promised a good day and it lived up to expectations. From pre dawn till around 08.45 Woodies, Thrushes and Starling poured through. At times I was counting through my bins Woodies moving S in the background and Woodies moving N in the forground with Thrushes coming W over my head !!! During this period many finches and Alba’s were simply not counted. Woodies in the main moved S, again to the E of Caldene Fields over the Bierley, Birkenshaw and Gomersal areas, mostly all movements were reduced to a trickle by 08.30.

A breakdown of Wood Pigeon movements from 07.15 – 08.45

A total of 39 parties were noted = 1= 300+ 2 = 220+ 6 = 120+ 12 = 50+ 18 = 50+

One interesting points is the numbers of parties involved in these movements of Wood Pigeon
28/10/08 = 42 and consisted of 7,469 birds
29/10/08 = 47 consisted of 7,793
12/11/08 = 39 consisted of 2,794

This ‘could’ illustrate an interesting point that whilst the number of moving parties are roughly the same when ever there is a big push the quantity of birds within a party are reduced as the season moves on. It will be interesting what future data throws up.

Black Headed Gull > 93 S/S/W
LBB Gull > 1 N
Wood Pigeon > 326 N + 2,468 S = 2,794
Alba Wagtail > 12 W
Starling > 278 W/S/W
Fieldfare > 964 S/W
Redwing > 386 S/S/W
Carrion Crow > 15 S
Greenfinch > 28 S/W
Chaffinch > 4 S/W
Redpoll > 2 S

Martyn Priestley