Oxenhope... hard work today! 25-09-2009

Pre Sunrise this morning... looking east (c) 2009


Pre Sunrise this morning... looking ENE (c) 2009


Pre Sunrise this morning... looking north east (c) 2009

Pre Sunrise this morning... looking north (c) 2009

Deep frontal cloud approaching from the west ! (c) 2009

0645 - 1045hr Dave Barker Howard Creber

W F3 rising W F5, 10degC at 0630, 30km haze, 7/8 Cu fractus, broken stratus, fog stratus over moors initially, QNH 1024 rising.

Initially open skies to the far east with deep cloud overhead and to our west. High pressure taking grip?? with further decrease in both mipit numbers and gulls! Again a reasonable pre and immediate post sunrise mipit rush but soon degenerating into into only a mediocre morning. Whilst 873 mipits in four hours sound might sound like a lot of birds, in reallity they were only moving quite thinly with much hard work constantly scanning with all resources by both observers!! Again many more were located moving out to our east than to our west. Most were high. Gulls over the last few days have seen a big decrease in numbers with now only very small numbers evident in the skies. Siskins in two very high groups were noted going SW, everything else seemed very sparse...... Hoping for better tomorrow and especially on Sunday!!

Moving birds in order of appearance:

Meadow Pipit 873 > S

Reed Bunting 5 > W

alba wagtail 10 > S and SW

Mistle Thrush 4 > W

Goldfinch 10 > E and S

Swallow 7 > S

Chaffinch 20 > W

Snipe 8 > W

Grey Wagtail 1 > W

Siskin 19 > SW

BH Gull 3 > W

Linnet 6 > W

LBB Gull 9 > S and NW

Canada Goose 4 > W

Greenfinch 2 > SE

Starling 2 > W

Rook 1 > S

Dave