With such fine autumn sunny weather today, we decided to walk a short section of the 24/7 footpath that borders Castlemartin Range. Skylarks were on the move (dozens seen/heard flying over) as were chaffinches but we didn't hear any bramblings in the small flocks of finches passing over.
It was interesting to watch a flock in excess of 250 jackdaws spiralling increasingly higher up into the blue sky. Eventually they had climbed so high that they were quite difficult to see even with binoculars. Were they dispersing we wondered and, if so, where were they heading?
When farm slurry is being pumped onto grassland, gulls are usually never far away. This morning well in excess of 1,000 herring gulls were feeding with smaller numbers of black-headed and lesser black-backed gulls in one such field. They appeared to be feasting on probably huge numbers of small invertebrates in the damp grassland, along side snaking lengths of pipe across the field. Most were adults and the flock-size was considered to be well in excess of the entire Castlemartin and Angle peninsula breeding population. Maybe farming activities like this at similar locations will be good places to look for white-wingers later on in the winter.
