Its March so migrate!

It’s all too easy to look at the weather and just think that nothing will be migrating cos the weather is not right. I tend to forget that the urge to migrate and move north is a strong instinct in birds in the spring and a birds understanding of the weather is luckily very different from mine. So after giving myself a pep talk I wandered around the local fields this afternoon behind Pinden quarry just on the outskirts of Longfield. I kicked up a flock of 46 corn buntings and 25 skylarks and then there in front of me was a superb male wheatear. I say superb because that is just how it looked, the bird appeared to be in its peak of breeding plumage. My spirits were lifted you would have thought I’d just found a major rarity, I was elated, it made my day and only 15 minutes from my front door.