A ferocious gale force easterly wind raged all day and made doing anything outside tricky. In an attempt to seek out a few birds in the relative shelter of the gorse I was pleased to find our first 3 fieldfares of the autumn. It wasn't long before I saw a few more, and then a few more! It soon became apparent a large arrival of both fieldfare and redwing was underway. Wave after wave of birds were arriving from the NW, sweeping low across the island and heading on SE towards the mainland. It's probably the largest thrush movement I've witnessed on Ramsey and in the space of 2 hours I had logged a bare minimum of 620 fieldfares and 326 redwing. But there were many more moving through too far away to count.
It was a spectacular sight and probably hints at the arrival of colder weather on their breeding grounds. They would have been forgiven for thinking it was still summer here with the temperature over the past few days hitting 18c - very warm for the time of year and probably contributed to the spectacular thunderstorm we saw last night and, as I type this, another one is brewing out there....
Huge flocks of fieldfares and redwing passing over Ramsey this afternoon