The Lincolnshire Bird Club

During a fruitless evening search for croaking bitterns I noticed several Blackbirds getting up from the scrub at Far Ings from 18:25, 40 minutes after sunset. We have seen this behaviour from migrants at this time of year in previous springs as they set off on their return migration usually on clear moonlit evenings. At 18:30 I picked up a Peregrine dashing about over the scrub about 30 m up and saw it narrowly miss two Blackbirds before hitting one with an obvious puff of feathers falling groundward. It then flew off back towards the bridge after a bit of plucking in flight. I assume this was the male from the local pair. Interestingly it never appeared amongst the 20,000 Starlings that murmed then roosted in Barton reedbed earlier in the evening.