High stuff

It seems only appropriate that pretty much all of the birds I've seen today (4/20 if you're an American) were ridiculously high. Having only just returned from a week on holiday in Germany (more of that later) I spent the day in the back garden trying to get on with some revision/napping/skywatching. Turned out pretty well with a Swift, 2 Common Buzzards, waking up from a snooze to a Kestrel hunting over nearby gardens briefly, a Sparrowhawk, and a Falcon Sp.

The first good bird of the day came as I was tucking into my delicious salad and ketchup-based lunch, picked up as an unusual speck in the sky for not being in the shape of a novelty balloon.

SHIT! RAPTOR!

Queue salad splutterings.  

High...

Above this Common Buzzard there was also a single Falcon Sp. so ridiculously high that it was only visible as a speck with binoculars. A Buzzard accompanied by a Peregrine an hour later at Wormwood Scrubs may well explain this mystery speck.

After an attempt at a Chemistry past paper that very quickly became a much more successful attempt at a siesta I woke up to the silhouette of a Kestrel over nearby gardens and then a distant Sparrowhawk heading South. But the real highlight for me came late in the afternoon with my first Swift of the year flicking it's way East at some height, the earliest I've ever seen in London and a reminder of what absolutely gorgeous birds they are. Roll on Summer.

I did say it was distant.