THE autumn migration of birds is well under way. Ospreys are turning up over lakes and reservoirs: these great white raptors coming down from the north may stay and fish for a day before moving on. They plunge into the water in spectacular style and grasp their prey with their talons. A young black stork that has veered off its normal route across the European mainland has been drifting around marshes in Essex. Golden plovers that bred on the moors are arriving at the water’s edge in estuaries: they have a spangled yellowish back that gleams in the sun, and some of them still have the large black spot of their summer plumage on their stomach.
They fly about with plaintive cries. Flocks of golden plovers can also be found on ploughed fields with lapwings. Many smaller birds are also heading south, but their movements are less obvious. Warblers such as blackcaps and chiffchaffs appear in gardens where they were not found in the summer, and the chiffchaffs may have a burst of autumnal song. In Scotland there has been a spate of greenish warblers, which breed all round the Baltic, with a white eyestripe and a white wing-bar.
DJM