Stonechat's a century

The BTO reserve has been covered like never before in the past week or so as The Lodgers piled on the pressure by picking off a few easy summer migrants, culminating in them sneaking up to the 100 mark ahead of us. Still no Sand Martin or Blackcap here (despite some of us spending 6 hours on the reserve yesterday for a ringing course!) but Dawn Balmer came up trumps with something far less predictable in Nunnery Lakes terms today in the form of a fine male Stonechat. (Bad luck to dedicated nest-recorders Mike Toms and Dave Leech who texted me thinking that this good 'find' during a nest-checking visit to the reserve was theirs, only to get the frustrating news that they'd been beaten to it!).

Edit: Turns out its bad luck to Dawn too... Ian Henderson was first out of the blocks with the Stonechat, finding it on Saturday - its getting pretty tough to find your own birds down the Lakes this year!

Better even than Stonechat was Ian's fly-over Marsh Harrier, also on Saturday, whilst Andy Musgrove sorted out Blackcap for the year in the Nunnery grounds on Monday morning, taking the total to 102.

100 up!

Edit: I have just heard that our out-going Director of Conservation, Dr Mark Avery, had a Blackcap at The Lodge yesterday (24th) so....

A Wheatear on the grassland to the south of the reserve at lunchtime today was a delight to behold and brings up the 100. Not quite the calibre of LEO and other recent BTO ticks, but it now feels as if migration is finally under way.

BTO 99 - RSPB 100 (STA)

Also one of these, but they're common now. ;-)

Photograph courtesy of Katie Fuller