Did I mention I have a new scope?

I dropped D#1 off at 4:30 at her friend’s house, and went up to Trimm’s Green to have a look for any passage migrants. I spent about an hour enjoying the afternoon sun and scanning distant horizons - the M11, Hatfield Forest, and distant villages are all viewable from here - without luck, but had more joy in the immediate vicinty.

There were a pair of Red-Legged Partridges right next to the car and 2 more over the road in Lysander Park (so called because the RAF flew Lysanders out of here for SOE during WWII). 2 Corn Buntings singing from a couple of trees, 3 Yellow Wagtails on various wires, 10+Linnet, and a Stock Dove. Then from the southern perimeter road on the road to Allen’s Green, another pair of Red-Legged Partridges and at some enormous distance shimmering in the heat haze a pair of Grey Partridges - my first for this patch. I had to eliminate Turtle Dove first, believe it or not, but that orange face and the fact that they walked like partridges gave it away.

There is no way I’d have got these without the new Kowa 883. The precision on zooming to 60x is fantastic, and at 20x birds just spring to life. The new scope did cost me a species, however, as the uniform buff breast of a female Wheatear perched on top of a distant dung heap morphed into the finely streaked breast of a Skylark as the eyepiece wound up to 60x.