I headed up the M11 this morning with the Jims hoping to year tick Stone Curlew at a favourite spot an hour from home. On arrival we found the year tick was easy and set about trying to count how many Stone Curlews were visible. Counting them should be easy right but as they move around, get flushed by Crows, squat down low in the vegetation and hide behind the small banks and valleys it makes a total count quite challenging but as luck would have it the whole flock took flight around 8.30am and landed again seconds later which gave me the time to scan left to right with the scope counting a total of 69 Stone Curlews.
My record for this site is 78 but this years high count by others was 64 until I had this count of 69. I started again from left to right hoping to beat the count but this time only managed 48 as many of the birds had already vanished into the vegetation and a third attempt resulted in a count of 36 proving how hard to see they are once settled.
We had a flock of twenty or more Lesser Redpoll over and some Redwing flew high to the south. Two Great White Egrets flew south and another dropped into a ditch in the distance. There were lot's of Skylark and a couple of Woodlark present along with Stonechat, Reed Bunting and Meadow Pipits. Common Buzzard, Red Kite, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk flew over and the heath was alive with Corvids including a single Jay.
Great to have finally seen Stone Curlews this year which take the pointless year list to 224 and now only 14 short of my worst ever year list of 238.
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