23rd October

Regent’s Park

Today was one of those days when I wish I was still back in Regent’s Park. It also shows that luck can be a major factor when birding, but it shows that you should never completely switch off.

Red-breasted Merganser: an adult female was on the lake this afternoon. This was only the 3rd park record, the others being February records in 1968 and 1976.

Short-eared Owl: while Dave was waiting for me to get to the lake to see the merganser he noticed that the BH Gulls had taken to the air and were hassling a large bird. He was over the moon to see a slow flapping Short-eared heading his way. Not liking the attention from the gulls it did a couple of fast wing-beats, picked up speed and headed off SW at 2.30pm.

Lapwing: there were two reports today; one at 9.16am and then seven at 1.30pm.

Woodlark: one flew SW at 9.32am.

Redwing: 285 flew through.

Blackbird: fifty plus headed SW.

Bushy Park

Not that productive even with a slightly higher cloud base.

Skylark: two singles.

Meadow Pipit: 40+ in the bracken area in the SE of the park.

Fieldfare: thirty flew through in various directions.

Redwing: one-hundred and fifty plus headed mainly SW, some of them landing briefly before continuing on their way.

Mistle Thrush: twenty-eight around the park.

Song Thrush: forty birds mostly in the area of scrub by Dukes Head Passage.

Lesser Redpoll: two singles.

Siskin: ten birds feeding and preening by Dukes Head Passage before flying towards the Canal Plantation.

Red-breasted Merganser female

just to prove that it is fully-winged, not that there are any in the waterfowl collection.