Follow A Hobby?

I nearly didn’t get out birding this morning. On the strength of the BBC forecast for solid rain throughout the morning I lay in bed until 8am, but when I eventually did reach Pilling I had a great old morning.

Maybe it was the warm but stiff South-Easterly that kept the rain at bay, pushing the clouds out into the Irish Sea. Right from the off there was a pronounced movement of Swallows again, all flying east and south-east into the prevailing wind, difficult to count in the buffeting wind but probably 4-500 in a couple of hours.

Swallow

I sat in my usual spot watching 4 Wheatears, all probably different birds from yesterday since there has been a marked movement of the species in the Fylde all week. I found a single Meadow Pipit there this morning, but It’s slightly odd that we have yet to see any numbers of Meadow Pipits, a species that migrates from much the same locations and in similar calendar time as Wheatears. It is stranger still when at Spurn Point on the East coast on Thursday, 4000 mipits were counted on the move south, the difference probably explained by those being birds of a more easterly origin.

There was no doubting the Wheatear I caught this morning, a big, bright, juvenile male of the Greenland race, Oenanthe oenanthe leucorrhoa, wing length 110mm.

Wheatear
Wheatear
Wheatear

From the stile I could see other Wheatears taking an interest in the mealworms, but the slightly tired, end-of-season wrigglies obviously didn’t gyrate enough for a second catch. After a while the Wheatears flew together along the wall, heading for Fluke or the delights of Knott End, and I didn’t see them again, so I concentrated on the marsh and the sea wall.

It always happens the same way, out of the blue, unexpected, but in view of the Swallows, the muggy air and warming wind, perhaps not totally unpredictable was the appearance of a Hobby - Hobbies are said to follow migrating Swallows. I think it came across the marsh from the North but within a second or two of my spotting it the bird hugged the sea wall for a brief few seconds and then rose up for a fleeting spat with a hovering Kestrel, then dropped low again before continuing its path east. I lost the dark bird against the distant trees of Lane Ends.

It’s difficult to follow a Hobby (pun intended) and so flushed by the shooter’s tractor, even the sight of a Green Sandpiper couldn’t match a peerless Hobby. Other counts today: 3 Little Egret, 2 Grey Heron, 30 Shelduck, 220 Curlew, 75 Lapwing, 140 Teal, 4 Wigeon, 1 Peregrine, 70 Goldfinch, 8 Linnet and 2 Mute Swan.

Kestrel
Mute Swan
My pal in Maine USA said she would send us Katia, thanks a bunch Grace.