I was ‘brought up’ on Snow Buntings at Teesmouth and have since enjoyed their company in Norfolk, Sutherland and Santa Maria, where, to my surprise, they regularly overwintered. The images below were all obtained there.

At the Tring Reservoirs in Hertfordshire on 5 November 1961, I joined ‘the regulars’ to watch an impressive north-westerly movement of Fieldfares. I heard a distant Snow Bunting and ‘called it’. It seemed an age before it appeared, following the same line as the thrushes, to convince my incredulous companions I hadn’t imagined it!

A few Lapland Buntings also wintered at Teesmouth in most years. Although I had seen one late migrant on Blakeney Point in summer plumage, it was more satisfying to see them in numbers on their breeding grounds in Lapland.

My conifer-rich valley in the Algarve is ‘home from home’ for eastern buntings, with Little Bunting (once my bogey bird) usually overwintering. Ortolans pass through on migration, typically in loosely structured flocks in autumn with the birds keeping at least a metre apart. Some occasionally rest up in the eucalypts below my house.

Rustic Bunting has also over wintered in the Algarve recently. Several late autumn birds have passed through my valley, as did a Yellow-breasted, which returned from the south-west a few days later after aborting its journey at the Cape. Black-headed Bunting has occurred twice, overshone (visually) by a superb male Red-headed of more suspect origin, which flew north on 8 July 2024.