Clearly an influx of Rough-legged Buzzards is occurring along the east coast at the present time and hopefully more will arrive and possibly over-winter; the last major influx to the UK was in 1974-75 so it is long overdue
Although birds that pass Falterbo in Southern Sweden are unlikely to reach the UK as Denmark is a short hop away the numbers of birds passing there in recent days makes an interesting comparison to what the East coast is getting; details taken from the Falsterbo web site at
http://www.skof.se/fbo/index_e.htmlBelow are day max for October -- out of interest the total RL Buzzard count for the whole autumn of 2009 was 185 birds thus the 1202 on October 13th 2010 shows just how big a year it is
Rough-legged Buzzard 30 11th, 355 12th, 1202 13th, 20 14th, 165 15th, 66 16th
Common Buzzard 139 10th, 10071 11th, 1056 12th, 2551 13th, 255 15th, 1154 16th, 196 17th,
Sparrowhawk max 388 9th, 229 12th, 310 13th,
Red Kite 145 9th, 503 11th, 140 12th, 138 13th,
From web site
11 Oct 2010: A Burst of Buzzards - this is Bird Show!
This day will be remembered as a very great day for raptor migration. More than 10,000 Common Buzzards were counted at Nabben today. Some were passing in soaring swarms of a thousand birds or more, really impressive!
Today's total is the highest in "modern times", that is since 1973 when the ongoing series of migration counts started. It's also worth pointing out, that all Top Ten daily totals during this period have occurred in mid-October.
Along with the buzzards many other raptors were counted, like 500 Red Kites, 7 White-tailed Eagles and 1 Greater Spotted Eagle.
Yesterday's fog must have stopped all migation from the north like a wall. Thus, the inland from Falsterbo was filled with raptors. This morning a weak cold-front passed and when the clouds drifted away southwards, the sky was filled with raptors.
The birds were migrating at high altitude but many passed straight over Nabben and created wonderful sights. Watch this YouTube-clip by David Erterius. Stunning! Truly stunning!
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