A simply classic autumn ringer’s day, the ones you dream about!   The wind dropped off to hardly anything but it stayed cloudy allowing us to put in a full day of ringing ending up with a monster 981 new birds; by far the star of the show were 854 Goldcrests caught (a tiny percentage of the actual number of birds which passed through today!).   The meagre totals of other species caught included a Yellow-browed Warbler, a Firecrest, 2 Treecreepers, 7 confusing Redpolls (probably Lessers) and 72 Robins.

Todays monstrous totals    10 Wren \ Gaerdesmutte:   3 Dunnock \ Jernspurv;   72 Robin \ Roedhals;   2 Blackbird \ Solsort;   2 Sangdrossel;   2 Blackcap \ Munk;   1 Yellow browed Warbler \ Hvidbrynet Loevsanger;   5 Chiffchaff \ Gransanger;   854 Goldcrest \ Fuglekonge;   1 Firecrest \ Roedtoppet Fuglekonge;   4 Blue Tit \ Blamejse;   1 Great Tit \ Musvit;   2 Treecreeper \ Traelober;   2 Chaffinch \ Bogfinke;   13 Siskin \ Groensisken;   7 Redpoll sp. \ Grasisken

Slightly confusing Redpolls

                The factor that made the Goldcrest numbers even more special was that it wasn’t just a dump of migrants brought down by the weather conditions it was that they were all actively and obviously migrating with flocks pouring over the garden even before it got light in the morning – a whopping 13,000+ were counted passing the point through the day with countless birds hitting the buildings on the tip and getting eaten by Gulls, Sparrowhawks, cats and anything else that fancied a bite size Goldcrest!

                I had literally no time to look up to see what was passing over the garden through the extremely busy morning but it was clear that tens of thousands of birds were piling overhead; as in previous days Chaffinches and Bramblings dominated with 35,000 counted on the point as well as 8,000 Siskins and a Gedser record breaking 5,900 Mistle Thrushes.   I didn’t see much else from the garden but there did seem to be good numbers of Crossbills heading over with 100+ seen and heard through my infrequent looks in the sky.

More pictures at www.wykebirding.blogspot.com