If I was a betting man (and I haven't done that since I put my shirt on Liverpool to beat Wimbledon at Wembley all those years ago _ ouch!), I'd say the Great Orme would be worth a look this weekend.
The great big lump of rock that Llandudno cowers under has a fine record for migrants and the clear, cold pre-dawn skies that I drove into Liverpool under this morning suggest plenty of birds will be on the move at present.
The Orme often produces lapland bunting, dotterel or something better in autumn _ try the limestone pavement, or the stunted trees in the wind scoured graveyard, and you may come up trumps _ especially with wryneck and common rosefinch on Bardsey this week.
Okay, so rosefinch is one of the least enigmatic migrants on the British list, but it still beats doing the gardening.
Then again, you could do worse than a seawatch this weekend _ a trashed Leach's petrel was found in Blackpool yesterday (one too many rides on the Big One I expect), so there should be a few in Liverpool Bay.
The last RSPB ferry cruise of the season didn't find anythiing mega yesterday, but they did have arctic skua and little gull, which are always worth a look.
The photogenic white winged black tern at Crosby may return, as may the positively less attractive ring billed gull, and geese, snipe and wildfowl numbers should build up at Martin Mere.
Grey wags are back calling around the rooftops of Old Hall Street _ in for winter, or are they resident???
Listen out for the gentle sighing (ahhhh.....) of redwings overhead from now on _ I had a few on th east coast last weekend, and ours should be coming in soon, oh yeah, and enjoy the remaining swallows and martins while you can, cold nights will send them heading south faster than I could lose my shirt on a "dead cert" in the National.....
Eyes to the skies everyone, eyes to the skies.
(Tomorrow's DP column is about the "night of the living wrynecks" on Spurn last weekend.)
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