springs a bust

to use the American term after the early promise of the Firecrest and Night Heron the later spring has been a total bust on the patch without a single scarce or rare bird being found in spite of the huge number of hours put in over the last 6 weeks, but that's patch watching for you and something that one off visitors never understand when they turn up for the one rare bird you find in 2 years! So unless the summer and autumn undergo a dramatic change in fortunes then the year list looks like being rather average and mediocre but who knows there could be a singing Blyth's Reed tomorrow! 

For the last week I have been slowly biking round all the pits every night and often morning as well listening hard for a sound of a Marsh or Icterine Warbler but the only new arrivals seem to be a couple of singing male Turtle Doves. During the last major east coast Icterine arrival in 1992 I was playing football with the son on June 8th in the Humber Bridge viewing area when I heard a singing Marsh Warbler in the ponds to the west; maybe I should A) take up football again or B) get my ears washed out; that bird stayed for two days and I found another on the 16th; in 1997 I found another singing male at Far Ings on May 31st and it stayed through to at least June 18th by which time it had stopped singing so it could have been there all summer. These are the only patch records to date and there has never been an Icterine but given the rarity of that species in recent years in autumn it is maybe not surprising and a spring vagrant may well be a better bet. 

The only area record of Common Rosefinch also came in June (4th 2003) when a singing male gave me something of a surprise at Barrow Haven station; that bird never did show itself but as I followed the song through the hawthorns it moved off east and was never heard again; 

Barrow Haven was a locality where I spent 5 years in the late 70's picking up a passing pratincole sp, Ring-necked Duck, two Nightingales, Montagu's Harrier, regular seabirds and a host of scarce migrants while supposedly working--which reminds me I do need to do some work now