A purple patch with blue bits!

My most-wanted BK bird falls at last. Finding bluethroats is always good, but this one was special.

Singing his little heart out. After six months without a patch tick, yesterday's collared flycatcher notched up the 230 and this little beauty was 231. What next?

Hard to believe that a week ago I was worried about losing my mojo. What a three day period I have had! The ninth saw me finding a marsh sandpiper off-patch, yesterday I found a great reed warbler on-patch and Mr Ekenberg found a collared flycatcher nearby and today it continued in a similar vein...

I have been boring Mrs B rigid with my master plan for this May - simply put to find a bluethroat on the patch. Ripagården-Hovs Hallar has a good track record in May for this species, so I headed there this morning pre-breakfast (ignoring the build-up of red-throated divers down the road in Laholmsbukten - they recorded 3200!). I had hardly got started when I flushed a small passerine from the vegetation along the shoreline. My brain screamed "bluethroat" and it was! A fantastic male, that started singing as I watched it. Superb. This is a tough bird in spring on the west coast of Sweden; amazingly it is about as hard as finding your own on the east coast of the UK these days. Sent an SMS to Martin and he rang for news and got to me very fast. The bird sat up on a clump of Rosa rugosa and sang lustily. Walked the rest of my route around the site, picking up 250 migrating barnacle geese, a single wood sandpiper, a hobby in-off and a fine male red-backed shrike. And so to breakfast.

With an appointment in Helsingborg, Mrs B and I headed south off-patch for the day. Before the meeting we squeezed in quiet flying visits to Sandön (90 more barnacle geese on the move and a nice hepatic morph female cuckoo) and Farhult (four spotted redshank and my first bar-tailed godwit of the year).

Gregory Peck! Hasslarp has an excellent record of turning up pectoral sandpipers in May. After three roller-coaster days the family are forcing me to change my lucky underpants, so things should quieten down tomorrow.

After the meeting we just had time for half an hour at Hasslarp. An inspired choice as within ten minutes I was looking at NW Skåne's 13th pectoral sandpiper! Superb! I spend a lot of time looking for waders and to finally find two scarce species in one week is rather excellent! The supporting cast looked good too, at least three Temminck's stints and a few wood sandpipers. What a day.

Ortolan bunting is on the top of the most-wanted list now, a few records today from around Halland and Skåne suggest this one could fall too with luck.

The fantastic Mr Ekenberg!

Yesterday at Flytermossen, amid the rain and cacophony of water rails and Acro warblers I thought I could hear the chatter-grunting of a great reed warbler right at the back of the pool. So this morning the pre-breakfast session took me back there in much better weather. Sure enough as I approached the reedbed the bird was singing close by - result! Great reed warbler is a good bird for BK and follows on from my first record in May last year. I wonder if they are regularly through in May these days? On the pool three pochards were nice, always scarce in BK, and a thrush nightingale was belting out its song.

Checked out the rev, which true to current form was rather quiet. Two Sandwich terns were good to see, my first this month. Offshore things were moving on a small-scale; barnacle goose (37), common scoter (16), velvet scoter (16) and red-throated diver (12). And so to home. I put the news out about the great reed warbler and went to muck out the car - a much over-due and rather unpleasant job. Martin Ekenberg rang me for directions to the warbler and as I chipped congealed sweets and soggy biscuits from the livestock area of the car I idly wondered if he would find something I had missed. Martin lives in the village and is an active local lister in the NW Skåne region (currently topping the Microbirding NW Skåne league for the year), he has been known to find a good bird or two...

The phone rang!

Look what Martin found!

Collared flycatcher is a very scarce spring over-shoot in our neck of the woods, last seen in BK in 1977 (I was 12 and lived in another country then).

These poor shots show most of the important bits; nice large white patch above the bill, full white collar, large white patch at base of primaries. No worries about this one being a hybrid! Excellent find Mr Ekenberg.

Yes, the phone rang and it was Martin, he was watching a spanking adult male collared flycatcher at Flytermossen. Throwing the hoover and the shovel out of the car I zoomed off and arrived to find the bird (and Martin) waiting patiently. Luckily it was not where I had been birding in the morning, otherwise I would have been a bit miffed! We watched the bird for ten minutes and then it flew to the island in the lake and showed rather poorly for the slowly increasing crowd before coming back to the roadside for the photos above. Great twitch, superb bird.

Back at home I finished off the car and then we all headed out to walk the coast between Vejbystrand and Ranarpsstrand. Counted breeding birds mostly, but also recorded 1-2 turnstone, an avocet and there were unusual numbers of sand martins about.

Cute