Noisy passerine flock in city centre at dusk, Leeds UK (1 Viewer)

Today at about 4.30pm I was walking past Leeds Town Hall when I noticed loud twittering calls coming from the row of small trees planted in front of it. It was getting too dark to see any details and I didn't have my camera with me (was going to see a film at Leeds International Film Festival, not in a birding or photography mode!), but I looked up and saw dozens of small passerine birds flying back and forth between the trees and possibly the building itself, calling loudly and cacophonously (it was loud enough to be heard from across the road despite city traffic). They sounded somewhat like House Sparrows, if perhaps a bit higher-pitched, were that sort of size and behaviour was similar-ish, but they seemed slenderer and longer-tailed than sparrows - more like pipits or wagtails perhaps. While it was dusky enough that most of the time they were only really visible as silhouettes, when I managed to observe them in the trees for the odd second or two (they were moving constantly, and flying very fast) I thought they might have had white outer tail feathers. There could have been anywhere between 50 and 100 of them. A couple of hours later, when it was completely dark, I walked back past there and there was no sign or sound of them. Any ideas?

My guess would be Pied Wagtails. Sounds a typical scenario for a roost and the description fits.

We get a similar Pied Wagtail roost in Preston. I may have just been in the wrong city centres before but this seems to be a recently growing phenomenon

Pied Wagtails certainly fit what I could see of them, but I have never seen anything like that number of Pied (or any) Wagtails congregating together before, not being anywhere near so noisy or energetic. Used to seeing 1-2 at a time on vacant land or supermarket car parks, or occasionally on terrace roofs. I think once I saw 20 or so together at some rural train or coach stop and thought that was an unusual concentration of them. But if this is a documented thing in other city centres I guess that must be what it was - I thought whatever they were, they must have been migrating or irrupting (the numbers and behaviour kind of reminded me of Waxwing flocks, but they obviously weren't as silhouette and calls were totally different...)

I've had Wagtail roosts of 200+ in Cardiff, Liverpool and Birkenhead (at least).

Nottingham too has Wagtail roosts in the City. The birds roost in the City as it's a couple of degrees warmer than surrounding areas though it would be interesting to see how far they come to use City roosts?



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100% sounds like a Pied Wagtail roost. There's a c250 roost next to a local supermarket (big hedge) here in Falmouth, and c20 years had 1300+ again in a supermarket car park ( brightly lit small trees) in Wincanton, Somerset so not a recent phenomenon in general.

Milton Keynes used to have a roof on the Council office roof of about 150 or so, particularly in the winter, near the heating outlet!

hwinbermuda said:

Milton Keynes used to have a roof on the Council office roof of about 150 or so, particularly in the winter, near the heating outlet!

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Was there a storm? :-O



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No Andy, there was an older typist with fat finger syndrome (FFS) meaning roost on the roof.

Wish I could get the quote thing to work

H

hwinbermuda said:

No Andy, there was an older typist with fat finger syndrome (FFS) meaning roost on the roof.

Wish I could get the quote thing to work

H

Click to expand...

I realise that, often do it myself


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