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2014 passage of pigeons


goober
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Started seeing the first groups of pigeon passing over.

Thursday saw groups of 8,9,12 and Friday there were a few groups of 20-30.

There were north easterly winds over the North Sea last weekend and maybe there were early birds.

Some PW members are seeing increased numbers in their area,could some of these be from Scandinavia maybe?

It will be interesting to see if we get the big flocks over on the next favourable winds from Scandinavia?

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Hi Fenboy,it's the flight path and their form of flight that makes them stand out.We have local birds here on clover and acorns but always in small numbers and their flight lines are totally different.

These same groups I describe would usually be very high in bigger groups if the weather was clear and settled.It is also early as the bigger groups usually appear early November.

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Coming from Gwent and travelling along the coast and motorway over Cardiff area.

There were more groups of 20-70 and another of 150+ this morning and all were flying low against the wind.

 

What makes you think they're foreign birds and not simply local birds heading out to feed, are they trailing a French tricolour..?

 

Just because there are more birds about locally, it doesn't mean that they're foreigners, the birds come and go as the seasons change.

 

Cat.

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Hi Cat,firstly..... Scandinavian pigeons don't carry French flags!These birds had Norwegian flags.

On a more serious note,where I live we don't see large numbers of pigeon and so these numbers and their direct flight stand out.

Today saw thousands passing through(at least 10,000).

It does seem early this year and I believe we'll have a bigger passage when wind direction is again favourable over the North Sea.

I'm guessing there will be sightings down South over the next few days(Bevs reported big numbers around Exeter last year).

 

On a related note,members have reported large numbers recently and I'm going guess (only a guess)that the birds passing today were made up of some of these birds and it will be interesting to see if numbers suddenly drop in some areas.

As I said last year,it will be interesting to gather views around the country to try and build a picture of routes/feeding patterns.

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I think you are right bruce, spoke to will garfit and told him of the numbers you are observing, and he also thinks these are passage birds, he has also noticed a large increase in birds, in the last 2 weeks in Cambridge,

I would expect you to observe a lot more in the forthcoming weeks, these birds are very jittery indeed and pre occupied with thoughts of flying south rather than being decoyed! It is very interesting , and indeed an amazing sight to see literally thousands of pigeon , on the move! Let's hope they come back,

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I still am not convinced that we have a massive influx of "foreign" birds either coming to or leaving the UK over the Winter months.

 

Of course the birds are more visible during peoples journey to work in the mornings, as in my area they're not leaving the roosting woods until about 7.30am, and they're now starting to get together in decent size flocks, as they do every Winter.

 

I saw probably a thousand birds all heading due South at around 7.40am this morning, at a fairly low altitude of about 150 - 300 feet.

 

I'm pretty sure that if I'd have been there at around 5pm this afternoon, I'd have seen them all heading back the other way, i.e. going back to the roosting woods from whence they came.

 

There's still plenty of food for them here in the UK, stubbles and berries being the main source in my area at the moment, and they haven't yet properly started on the rape, so why would they beggar off to a mountainous area like the Pyrenees and Northern Spain where there's likely to be even less food available..?

 

I believe the birds will move around the UK when the Weather is hard in some areas and we have prolonged snow cover, in my area the birds will simply disappear, and it can take some time, (even years) for them to get back to their former numbers, but we have not yet had any cold weather yet this year, so what incentive is there for them to migrate, perhaps they're "Wannabee Swallows"..?

 

Cat.

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Hi Cat,winds were north easterly yesterday morning(providing a tail wind from Scandinavia) and today Ditchman has witnessed this fresh passage of birds.(in my previous post)

They will travel down South over the next few days and hopefully some may pass my way again,if so I will try and film the flight to give you an idea of the scale of numbers.

Yesterday I saw flocks of 30-300 birds constant from 8am until 2pm probably 30seconds between flocks.

The previous day was more windy and birds were sometimes no more than 15 feet above buildings.

The birds I reported last Thursday travelled over around sun/Monday last week(again winds north easterly over North Sea)the reason I saw them was I guessed the first flocks would travel this wind and notice the increase in numbers/direction.

The pattern is usually a couple of days of small groups followed by one or two days of huge numbers,groups are smaller in strong winds but with calm sunny weather they travel very high in long strings of 500-1500 birds.

Generally down here there is one main passage but this year was two weeks early so I may hopefully see more in the next day or two.

Unlike other reports,the birds passing here are mainly adult birds and normal size and not the juvenile birds reported by others and this has always been the case.I have no explaination for this.

I hope this may go some way to converting you?

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I was always led to believe that Pigeons migrating south from the UK to the continent via the south west coast was a given fact. I was always also told that birds migrating from Scandinavia to the UK has never been completely proven so that is the debate.

I personally think that the influx of Pigeons and the apparent increase in Pigeons we see in the winter months in the UK have got to be migrants. No personal facts to prove that though, just my opinion.

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Well Goober, I remain to be convinced, I've met so many wind up merchants on this forum over the years, a good number like you who can't even be bothered to fill in their profile so you could be posting from the planet Mars for all we know..? :blush:

 

I've been shooting Woodies in South Herts / Beds / Bucks for over 40 years now and I can honestly say that I've never witnessed these vast flocks of birds apparently hell-bent on leaving the UK to spend the Winter in warmer climes eating God knows what..?

 

What I have witnessed, particularly at this time of year when they are most noticeable, is vast flocks of birds leaving roosting woods and heading off to feeding areas probably up to 5 or maybe 7 or 8 miles from where they roost.

 

These are not migrant birds, they are locals and they return in dribs and drabs every night back to the same roosting wood.

 

I suppose to many people who simply have not studied the habits of the local bird population over many years, this scenario may appear as a kind of mass influx or exodus, if you don't know what you're looking it, but I've not read much convincing evidence to the contrary.

 

How can you be so sure that these birds are not locals..?

 

Cat.

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