Spring passage

We'd had a wild and woolly evening's weather then everything went deathly quiet about ten o'clock. The cat went out for a pee and I checked we still had fences and we sort of hoped that was it for the night. And of course it wasn't. I'd finally dozed off just as the blackbird kicked off the dawn chorus. He was half an hour later than usual so I was surprised when I checked the time.

It was a quieter morning with a very brisk wind and bouts of torrential rain. I decided not to go for a walk. Public transport on rainy days is erratic enough on weekdays, on Sundays it's erratic and infrequent and there's not a lot of shelter to a modern bus shelter, nor indeed all that many bus shelters.

Hardier souls will be about seeing what the wind's blown in. No doubt there'll be reports of kittiwakes on Pennine reservoirs and divers in Midland water parks. The storm's driven a lot of warm air up from the South so hopefully it'll have given the Spring migration a boost after a couple of weeks of filthy weather in Spain has put a lot of it on hold. This last, by the way, is my excuse for not adding to the year list this week. 

As I've mentioned before, Spring passage is a very different game to Autumn. Autumn passage is a relatively leisurely affair, there's no especial rush and plenty of time and opportunity for a bird to linger for a day or three to feed up and lay down a bit of fat for the long stretches of flying over seas and deserts that lie ahead. Spring is a sprint: first come gets first dibs at the best breeding territories and birds don't linger for long. Luckily they mostly move in waves so when you visit one of the migration hotspots if you missed some birds yesterday there's a good chance some more will come along today. Until that day they've suddenly all passed by.

Migration hotspots tend to be on the coast because the birds are following the local topography and will tend to favour headlands and seaside pastures for to rest up and refuel before going on their way. Further inland they could have half a county to choose from so they'll be a lot more dispersed. Even so there'll be places locally that'll be favoured by passing migrants. Round here, for instance, the mosses attract wheatears on their way to their Pennine breeding grounds and black terns visit the flashes on their way to the Continent.

Tomorrow I'll head over to Merseyside, like as not the Wirral coast, in the hopes I connect with something or other. Even more like as not I'll get a bit rained on in the process.