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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Farnboro John" data-source="post: 1567659" data-attributes="member: 36432">Probably during either spring or autumn migration when everything is on the move.Bird races are often scheduled for early May to give teams the best chance of a big total on the day.  On balance I would expect more variety of birds that intend to use the UK in spring, but a wider variety of truly vagrant rarities in autumn.Pick the right day and the right place and you can pick up a proportion of winter migrants not yet departed, a bunch of summer visitors just arriving, the residents doing their thing and an array of birds that only visit the UK during migration on their way to and from their breeding and wintering grounds elsewhere.Coastal stations are favoured as they generally have the widest array of habitats compressed into smal areas i.e. sea, rocky/sandy/muddy shorelines and estuaries, coastal marshes, and fields, hedges, woods etc behind the coast.Anywhere in North Norfolk, Minsmere (a top place for spring variety where 100 spp can be knocked off in a single morning with luck and effort), Dungeness, Pagham/Selsey and Portland are the first places that spring to my mind but others will have their own recommendations.John</blockquote>