Farewell Terry!

Terry bagged this shot of today's star bird, a singing male river warbler just outside Kalmar.

Kicked off our last morning session of the trip with another very early start at Ottenby. Terry hammered the woodland doing well for barred warbler and golden oriole. I checked out the KP area again but to no avail. Did pick up three long-tailed duck and at least four goosander, as well as the regular flock of seven black-tailed godwits and the usual waders. We cruised slowly north, Ottenby had not been over-kind to us and it stuck the knife in nicely with both bee-eater and white stork after we left today! Our drive north up to Beijershamn was interupted by stops for two or three rosefinches, a nice male Montagu’s harrier, a single grey partridge, golden plover (3) and redwing(1).

Biejershamn in a quick visit produced grey plover (2), dunlin (14), and an incredible 36 spotted redshank. Whilst here Mrs B rang in to tell us that there was a river warbler across the bridge in Kalmar. We asked a local birder for directions to the site and before we knew it we were enjoying bright sunshine, warmth, great views of a close and often obliging river warbler and also a cracking proper-red singing male rosefinch. It almost felt like a holiday… Drove on home seeing surprisingly little, although my spotter was rather tired. We just had time to visit Dömestorp before Terry’s train. The plan was to jam into the singing the red-breasted flycatcher and actually see it. It was not to be. I dropped an exhausted Terry off at Båstad and just had to hope he would not fall asleep and wake up in a siding somewhere in Copenhagen in the middle of the night. A great trip despite appalling weather.