11th June

The continuing fine weather may yet spring a surprise but just at the moment it doesn't look particularly likely to drop much by way of quality arrivals. Today's only newcomers on the land were 3 Reed Warblers - 2 at the Bill and another at East Weare. The sea came up with 34 more Common Scoter and a Balearic Shearwater through off the Bill.

Moth immigrants included 27 Rusty-dot Pearl, 4 Diamond-back Moth and a Silver Y caught overnight at the Obs.

As it seems as though pretty well of the routine summer migrants have now gone through it's maybe timely to have a quick look at how this spring fared. We keep telling visitors that we got the feel for it being an average season and that's more or less borne out by our ringing totals:

     2014
     total
2009-2013
mean
2009-2013
highest
2009-2013
lowest
Goldcrest      6   39 67 1
Firecrest      6 11 14 7
Chiffchaff      401 493 955 341
Willow Warbler      1116 1135 1872 502
Blackcap      249 353 729 102
Garden Warbler      61 73 170 24
Whitethroat      161 131 250 69
Sedge Warbler      43 44 68 19
Reed Warbler      22 34 76 11
Pied Flycatcher      13 5 8 3
Redstart      31 43 64 22
Spotted Flycatcher       48 55 101 36

If you bear in mind that our record-breaking spring of 2012 somewhat slants the recent mean toward a higher value for most species than would have been the case if we'd totted up a longer run of comparison years, then 2014 really hasn't been too bad. Goldcrest is a stand-out loser - they seem very unpredictable these days, with annual totals far less related to the severity of the winter weather than was the case in the past - and Firecrest didn't do a lot better, whilst Whitethroat and Pied Flycatcher are the two obvious winners. It's fair to say that everything else managed pretty OK totals, which has to be heartening in this day and age.




Chiffchaff, Sandwich Terns and Bee Orchid - Southwell, Portland Harbour and Portland Bill - 11th June 2014 © Pete Saunders (Chiffchaff), Will Bown (Sandwich Terns) and Chris Dresh (Bee Orchid)