Barred from Bockhill

I wasn't out this morning, due to a mixture of circumstances. The first was trying to find out why the kitchen ring main wouldn't work, and then worrying when it did, although I hadn't done anything to change things, and the second was doing some work on my computer, for a friend, that for some reason I made difficult when it should have been easy.

One thing that I did notice this morning was that there were suddenly lots of Goldfinches round the garden, this is the first time this autumn that they've paid us a visit.

When the news came through that there were two Pallas's Warblers at Pegwell Bay it seemed a visit to the farm was needed. The wind was still uncomfortable and there seemed to be very few birds about, except that I noticed an increase in Robins, every bush in the Freedown seemed have one and a few nervy Song Thrushes around. As I was going round the wood I bumped in to Jack and we slowly made our way along the Droveway. We had a few Goldcrests and a couple of Song Thrushes and another bird flew along the hedge and landed further up. Then we both stopped and it was obvious that we had both recognised the call coming from the hedge further up the road. A Barred Warbler had just had a burst of it's staccato, mechanical sounding alarm. The was not a co-operative bird and in the next 15 minutes all I got were the short flight views, the last I at least managed to watch through binoculars. After it had disappeared into a large bramble bush we didn't see it again, but I've some hopes that it may reappear tomorrow.