Tetrading brings a late summer migrant

It was back in the early 80’s while working the tetrads of Oxfordshire for the BTO’s first Winter Atlas that set us on a path from which we have never looked back.

Counting and listing all the birds and their numbers was a competition, a game between us and the birds, a sort of hide and seek, and from those early days in the field grew an appreciation of the joys of nature and with it our passion for birding.

And had you been with us yesterday while we carried out a Timed Tetrad Visit for the BTO’s next Winter Atlas in a square that is centred on the attractive hamlet of Tretio, you would understand our enthusiasm and motivation to count and list for such surveys.

Highlights of this disciplined 2-hour walk on remote and traffic-less lanes to the north of St David’s airfield include:-

The unexpected discovery of a small pond that held 11 Teal, 9 Moorhen and a single Little Grebe.

The finding of a flock of C100 Chaffinch that challenged us to find other species associating with them - Brambling, Tree Sparrow and Yellowhammer would have been special, but we were satisfied with 3 Reed Buntings.

Of 3 Merlin sightings in the course of the day, for this tetrad we recorded one male, our first of the winter, a really dapper little individual sat patiently on a hay bale, eyeing up the pipits no doubt. Sparrowhawk, Peregrine and Kestrel were all present, and no wonder when there are so many birds about; massive flocks of Wood Pigeons for instance. The challenge here was to find the Stock Dove and as R.D. mentioned yesterday, we found only 2 in 2000 birds.

But most impressive of all the sightings was the incredible number of Starling. In ever-restless flocks they wheeled and fed on large areas of cereal stubble and grassland. It is notable this year how much more cereal stubble there is compared to previous years, which might account for the very large numbers of pigeons and starlings. One such flock of Starlings we estimated held 25 to 35 thousand birds, all leap-frogging each other across the fields - the largest flock of this species we have ever encountered on the ground - a sight to behold.

But thrill of thrills goes to a single Swallow seen while the rays of the November sun warmed our faces. Briefly, it was like a breath of summer.