All you need is Rain da, da- da da

Monday 20th August 2012
Typical aint it - weekend comes round, a chance to get out and do a bit of Birding and what happens: beautiful blue skies, fluffy white clouds and a gentle warm breeze. Monday comes and we're back to low cloud, poor visability, Mizzle, turning to heavy rain early morning. Lovely jubly. Its enough to make a passing migrant stop off in Warwickshire. So it was with a little optimism that the Caldecote area was visited this morning. The walk started well with 100 House Martins over the Caldecote Hall grounds The patch had changed in that a large Rape field that had been ploughed over during the weekend attracted 300 or so gulls, mainly Lesser Black Backs, a third of which were juveniles and 2 Yellow legged gulls. There was nothing else along the Anker flood plain though. As the rain got heavier it was back home for a change of clothes before venturing out to Alvecote - not a sausage in any of the pools or the Orchard. It was late afternoon before checking the rest of the Caldecote walk but it proved quite productive with no less than 4 Common Redstarts in the Hawthornes. Other birds on the walk included 3 juv Skylarks a Common Whitethroat and several Reed Buntings.