Autumn is here

Today was officially the first day of autumn and what's the perfect bird to herald it - yellow-browed warbler. 

Despite scouring the bushes this morning I had to twitch one that Mark Whittingham had found by the path to the Oddie Hide (Mark also had willow tit and cetti's warbler - both much more scarce than YBW). It was nice to watch it, flitting around in the alders. The highlight of my morning was a garden warbler in the elderberry bush by the entrance and a few migrant hawkers.

Migrant hawker dragonfly in the plantation

I've been so busy since returning from my near-annual pilgrimage to Tarifa for the raptor migration.

Honey Buzzard

Short-toed Snake Eagle

I've got hundreds of shots to sort out still and I had to prepare a talk, about my obsession with my local patch,  for the North Northumberland Bird Club on Friday evening - had a great turn out of 74 people and the talk went down well. And I did predict that there would be a yellow-browed warbler on the patch this weekend.

I've managed a  coupe of visits to the patch since I got back. A decent evening seawatch on Tuesday evening for an hour produced a couple of adult pomarine skuas (there were probably three - I took my eye off them) and a couple of Arctics.

Pink-footed geese are back with a couple of skeins over last weekend and most evenings from home.

Hopefully things might get a bit quieter so I can get some birding done and keep this blog updated through the autumn.