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Message: <blockquote data-quote="halftwo" data-source="post: 1326501" data-attributes="member: 45720">Autumn influxes pouring in again today - hoards, crowds, flocks.Started with five Whooper swans - three from yesterday have left to leave the family of three juvs. and two adults - with the two Mute swans.Next up - a new autumn sound - a Water rail or two calling from cover.Scores and scores of thrushes of four varieties swirling around constantly, along with the usual buntings, larks and pipits. Finches too - four species again. On the river a Little grebe and a Grey wagtail.Out towards open fields Snipe begin to rise - more than forty today in all.And then - in a blurr and a burr - a dozen Grey partridge skim away.Suddenly fourteen Tree sparrows fly over and circle - one breaks off as the others carry on. Magpies sit on top of bushes rattling calls across fields.Hedges with Wrens, Robins, Dunnocks, and a single Stonechat; Great and Blue tits. Meadow pipits and Skylarks up from fields, and in the distance, between me and plough, hundreds of corvids and gulls.Seven more Grey partridge from by the hedge as thrushes and buntings fill the sky.On the Ship Canal seven more Mute swans and five further Little grebes float under several perched Cormorants. Mallards and Gadwall in small numbers. Another Grey wagtail - but in the distance a crowd of duck: I head their way.An unpresidented number - 120 Tufted duck are on the canal; Coot and a single surprising Wigeon add to the flocks. Moorhens skulk; gulls - only Black-headeds today - squabble. Next up - as possibly more (or some of the same) Tree sparrows chip in the hedge - a single Siskin goes over. Fourteen Stock doves come up from the crop and fly with forty Lapwings and twenty odd Starlings.Water rails - two more - squeal from another patch. A Heron squawks as it laps past. Pied wagtails protest as a Kestrel perches - first winter male. Rising Snipe increase the numbers as I complete the circuit - and the swirling masses of thrushes and buntings, finches and Tree sparrows fills the sky again. A Great-spotted woodpecker incongruously crosses amongst them.Back past the scrubby wood a Bullfinch and a Goldcrest are calling; Long-tailed tits and a Coal tit. Along the road ten House sparrows in the hedge by the farm. Wood pigeons - few in number today waddle in crops with Pheasants.Fifty species and thousands of individuals - and on a virtually raptor-free day. And I know the influx isn't over yet.Edit: Just returned from a trip to Liverpool - added Peregrine (south over M62 just to the east of J7 - heading towards Fiddler's Ferry), Buzzard, Collared dove, Mistle thrush and Common gull to the day's list.</blockquote>

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