More new birds from Regent's Park

A further note of frustration on being away was that while I was away, a ring ouzel had been spotted in Regent's Park and actually hung around for a couple of days. I went to look for it when I got back but to no avail. However, in the area where the ring ouzel was supposed to be I did see 2 chif chafs for the first time this year. I was very pleased with this as I have only ever seen a handful of chif chafs ever. Then I walked over to my normal area that I walk past in the morning and saw another unusual bird. This was just like the chif chafs I had just seen but to me definitely looked a bit different and if anything a bit greener. I had seen from the Regent's Park bird blog that a willow warbler had been spotted so knew that they were around. I said to myself that if the description of the willow warbler said anything about being a bit green that this must be a willow warbler. Sure, enough the RSPB site describes them as having grey-green backs. The real way to tell the difference between them is the song and in fact the next day I did hear the same bird singing and noted a slight trailing off and lowering of the notes in the song towards the end which conforms with what Collins' Bird Guide says about their song; "somewhat descending verse". The advent of the digital age is of great benefit to birding. When I got to my desk at work, I immediately looked up a willow warbler and could play their song with no problem and then compare it with the chif chaf's as opposed to looking up the phonetic description of the song which to my understanding is incomprehensible.

Yesterday, on my usual walk I then spotted a redstart, again, my first ever. At first I thought it might be a stonechat having seen many of these before but then on closer inspection, especially with the flitting tail, it had to be a redstart. That makes 88 all time UK birds and 81 for the year. 100 is beckoning on both counts. That's got to be achievable.