Hawfinches
Hawfinches
Days before Tropical Storm Ophelia was drowning the countryside with an eerie, orange lustre, the skies flashed with clues of oddities to come.

The heavens would soon be swirling with Saharan sands and the ashy fallout from Portugal's wildfires.

Looking upwards last Sunday, flickering wings were catching the eye.

Small squadrons of birds the shape of badly-crafted paper planes trickled over inland hilltops ever westwards, signalling their flights with the sounds of sharp nails driven into granite blocks.

Hawfinches were on the move, white wing-bars and stubby tails shining bright and formations communicating with high-pitched call notes on the very edge of human hearing.

For those listening below it was an unprecedented experience of shock and awe.


Hawfinches are birds of tall tree-tops or root clusters where windfall fruit seeds gather.

Hefty beaks powered by strong jaw muscles can exert pressures that make cracking cherry pips and even olive stones a cinch.

To see hawfinches on the move in unprecedented numbers not only eclipsed all of last week's twitching news, for many veteran visible migration enthusiasts the event even outshone Ophelia's tangerine colour scheme.

The Rare Bird Alert bulletin summarised the hawfinch invasion thus: "Perhaps the main feature of the week was an extraordinary movement of hawfinches across southern England. There were a good number of reports on Friday, October 13, and then widespread records from Saturday, involving double-figure flocks, including 25 over Morden, London, and more than 50 on St Mary's, Isles of Scilly.

"High counts continued on Sunday with 40 over Hampstead Heath, London, 21 over Arundel, Sussex, and 37 over Timsbury, Hampshire."

And still they come...


My own encounter, high in the Chiltern Hills, was the first time I had discovered a hawfinch on my home patch.

Breeding hawfinches vanished from the area's deciduous woods four decades ago.

So, with as many as 100 birds passing over during a five-day window, why were we witnessing such aerial fire works weeks before Bonfire Night?

And was Ophelia to blame?