A chat over lunch

I called into the Main Pit at Collingham briefly at lunchtime, en route to a site meeting at South Clifton. Other than 4 Goldeneye there was very little on the pit itself, but a small passerine perched in the ruderal vegetation between the grassland and the water could only be one thing - a Stonechat. Stonechats were very thin on the ground the last couple of winters (e.g. just nine recorded at five sites across the whole county in January and February 2010), so it was nice to find this bird - a female, which showed quite pronounced orangey fringes to the secondaries (just about discernable in the picture below).



Stonechat at Collingham Pits