Return Migration

There's no doubt that there's a touch of autumn in the air at the moment as even though the sun is sending out plenty of heat, the mornings and evenings are getting cooler. Today was an extreme case in point; it was only 14C at 9am when I began my bike ride and the first rain in weeks was threatening--- and duly arrived before I got back home.
I say all this as preface to the fact that It seemed a propitious opportunity to see if there was further evidence of the year's return migration other than the pied flycatchers in the garden and lots of swallows sitting on wires.
I decided to pop up to the plains as this relative high point hereabouts (all of 130 metres) is where migrating birds often take rest to feed up. I was cycling past the site of eolien 4 when I came across my first wheatear of the autumn flying up from the side of the track. He was quickly joined by a couple of others and then the group expanded to six or more as they perched on the mountain of excavated rocks. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to leave this sizeable pile of interesting habitat rather than use it for backfill so that future migrants could make use of as a slight compensation for the unwelcome intrusion of the wind turbines ---but then I doubt if anyone would listen.
A red kite made an appearance a little further down the track; although not necessarily a long-distance migrant, the species disperses after breeding and this individual was not from around here.
A flock of a dozen or more blackbirds which were feeding on hedgerow berries were a post breeding group which were probably migrating but the three whinchats which I flushed from the roadside between the bio farm and Artenac certainly were. Just by them in a bush was a calling willow warbler, a species like the wheatear and the whinchat which mainly breeds far north of here.
Negative evidence of return migration came from the absence of the family of red backed shrikes which I have mentioned in earlier posts and not a single call of a golden oriole; both these beautiful birds seem to have left us until next spring.