Report from 28 to 30 September

This week saw a new influx of Pied Flycatchers. This is likely due to different migration timing between the age classes, as the adults leave earlier and young birds a little later. Willow Warblers were also much in evidence, especially with their frequent calls. Waders mostly comprise a handful each of Common Snipe, Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, Dunlin, and Green Sandpipers, quite likely the same individuals that have been lingering for the last two weeks. The one new arrival among waterbirds was a Little Crake playing hide and seek in the reedbed for a good half hour – needless to say, it won. Turning to departures, the Squacco Herons are gone, and so are the Cattle Egrets, which probably disperse locally, although we don’t know exactly where. Nature puts on a great show in the evenings, when the Starlings fly into their roost. The first two or three begin to appear half an hour before, dusk, and start to circle over the reedbeed; soon there are twenty, thirty, then a hundred or more. They appear out of nowhere and within a few minutes there are several thousand Starlings whirling in the sky, the noise of their wings ringing loud and clear. Then, all of a sudden, as if compelled by an unknown signal, they dive into the reedbed as one. And all is silent again.
By nature, Wild Boars are diurnal, but when living in proximity to humans, they prefer to be active at night. Almost all my encounters with them are at dawn.