Flaming June - a BK tick!

It has been a quiet spring really so far, I have worked pretty hard and have found just pied wagtail and great snipe. I am not complaining but against last spring's haul this seems much quieter. Since we returned from Gotland I have yet to struggle out of bed for a dawn session. Today all that changed for the better with a great self-found patch tick and a much-needed reminder that things are still on the move and there is still work to be done.

We started our day at lunch time today, picnicking at Gröthögarna and then wandering around looking for dragonflies in the many small wetlands dotted throughout this impressive area. Sadly nothing unusual, although a Cordulia aenea was my first on a coastal site in BK. The kids put up with this tramping about well and by way of thanks we drove over to Eskilstorpsstrand so they could have a crack at some sea and sand. As usual I dorked along with all my birding gear as they raced along through the shallow water and scampered about on the sand. Out to sea things were hard to get onto in the choppy conditions offshore (a light westerly) but a smallscale movement of mainly male eider seemed to be happening.

Turning back the rest of the team headed back down the beach whilst I elected to take the path just behind the low dunes. Halfway back to the car I was stopped in my tracks by a burst of birdsong. Surely that was a greenish warbler, a bird I had hoped to see on Gotland but my hopes had been scuppered by their late arrival. I had forlornly listened to recordings every evening for a week on Gotland and now the homework had paid off. Just to be sure I played the song quietly on my dictaphone - I was not attempting playback I hasten to add, just confirming the song. My dictaphone has tiny speakers and I raised the unit to my ears to hear the recording. The greenish had no problem hearing it though and streaked in, singing lustily and unseen above me and then flying over my head to perch briefly in view low down before heading back the way it had came and back up into the low canopy. A brief impression of a Phyllosc with a good super and it was gone. It stopped singing and hoping it would perk up I put the news out.

I have always 'fancied' this stretch of coast for migrant passerines but, apart from this year's great grey shrike, I have put in a lot of time for no reward. I was just smiling and reflecting on this when I heard a singing male common rosefinch. Bloody hell! Two good birds in 15 minutes, just amazing. Unlike the greenish this bird behaved, a 2K male that sang low and in the open and occasionally flew down to a small stream and drank. When and from what direction had these two birds arrived? Looking at the Greenish warbler records from across Sweden it seems they have arrived late this year and today a number did turn up in unlikely places. Nice one!

BK gets common rosefinches every spring in small numbers, but they are almost always 'practising' 2K males, like this one found at Eskilstorpsstrand this afternoon. I have yet to see a female or any evidence of successful breeding.