Smew

17 Feb 2012 Smew by Peter Warne

Whilst we suffered a short, sharp period of extreme winter weather last week, it has been colder, for longer, on the Continent. One consequence was an impressive an influx of Smew, which in turn caused a sharp rise in the BirdTrack reporting rate. Similar spikes also appeared in the reporting rates of species that are usually very hard to see, such as Woodcock, and species that were presumably forced into gardens by the snow cover, like Redwing. Plenty of Blackcap records have been coming in too, though the reporting rate remains typical for the time of year.



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