A walk up the downs on Saturday turned up a surprise, when I flushed a bird off the path along the down top behind the house. It looked a bit wrong, but I thought it was just one of the common migrants that have really tailed off in the last week. After waiting for Karen to catch up we walked carefully on and found it again. We then spent a few minutes inching up on it, not knowing what we were looking at. Finally it became clear: a Snow Bunting, about a month earlier than an early bird, and in completely the wrong place (we see them on coast shingle in Sussex, not grassy down tops).
Typically I didn’t have my good camera, just my compact, but with a bird as confiding as a Snow Bunting you can still get something.
