Lapland Christmas.

 

Our Village Hall looking festive...

As usual at this time of year, pre Christmas visits and shopping etc put the kybosh on the birding. This year is even worse than most as we had a two week non starter after Arwen, so we are tail chasing to catch up.

We both had our boosters last week. As usual mine left me hammered. The following day was like the mother of all hangovers and I am still not 100% yet. That's three out of three that have been no walk in the park but it is better than the alternative, so I expect it to be come a twice annual feature in years to come.

This week has shown that some birds are still on the move. In our village, Blackbirds on fallen apples have increased to 23+ from maybe a dozen, a lone Fieldfare was dotting around and 7 Redwings flew west.

One day last week I was pleased to have a Lapland Bunting fly low south along the coast path. It seemed to come from the field opposite the village and it headed towards Seahouses Farm but I couldn't relocate it. Laps are rare on my patch and I've still not seen one on the ground here. This was the first since 2019 and before that was 2013. An adult Mediterranean Gull was in the same fields with a few Black headeds.

An old drawing of a Lapland Bunting....