Wednesday 28 October 2009

MIGRATION BARRIER- Visible migration at Beddington Farmlands



There was a fairly significant migration over London last night. I woke this morning to 200+ Woodpigeon heading southwest, from the obs window, and a morning watch from the farm produced 600-700 Redwing, 220+ Fieldfare (middle pic), 40+ Chaffinch, 20+ Goldfinch, 8 Meadow Pipit, 1 Mistle Thrush, 15 Stock Dove and 10+ Skylark .

There were good numbers of birds (thrushes, tits and finches) in the trees around Hangman's bridge- no sign of a Chiffchaff that I had yesterday in the garden.


An interesting feature of the migration at Beddington was that flocks heading southwest started circling and flying in different direction from about 0930. A look a the weather charts show that presumably they detected the approaching fronts and stiffening westerly airflow (top map). A long line of birds heading to the west country have presumably hit it further west and sent a ripple effect back down the line. Last night when they set off from the continent, there was a calm high pressure producing good crossing conditions (bottom map).
Also Jack Snipe flying around Jim's Pit.

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