With yesterday's poor visibility being replaced by mainly dreary skies and occasional spits and spots of rain the sea returned to the fore, with prolonged coverage at the Bill coming up with totals of 714 Gannets, 533 Common Scoter, 39 Sandwich Terns, 28 Little Gulls, 11 commic terns, 9 Shoveler, 6 Arctic Skuas, 5 Red-throated Divers, 2 Mallards, a Manx Shearwater and the now virtually ever-present Iceland Gull; the other even longer-staying Iceland Gull was also still in the Ferrybridge/Portland Harbour area. Whilst not at a complete stand-still passerine migration was hardly a compelling spectacle: a Ring Ouzel at Barleycrates Lane was easily the highlight, with the Bill coming up with little more than the thinnest smattering of phylloscs on the ground and a handful of mainly Swallows passing through overhead.
Iceland Gull - Portland Bill, 2nd April 2014 © Martin Cade
Also thanks to Bob Harris for dropping us off a couple of his nice photos of Adders; these were taken in recent days at Easton, but it seems that in general Adders are getting a lot more difficult to find on Portland these days than they used to be:
And on the subject of other wildlife, this Blossom Underwing was a decent highlight from the Obs moth-traps this morning; with records in just two previous years (12 in 1999 and a single in 2003) this is a surprisingly high value moth at Portland (photo © Martin Cade):
