28th January

In marked contrast to yesterday it was a pleasure to be outdoors today, with a freshening breeze only slightly spoiling the otherwise decent conditions. The birding was much as on many of the fair days just lately, with 3 each of Short-eared Owl, Chiffchaff and Firecrest, and singles of Black Redstart and Blackcap scattered around the Bill/Southwell area, 7 Red-throated Divers through off the Bill and 300 Mediterranean Gulls, 3 Great Northern Divers, a Pale-bellied Brent Goose and a Sandwich Tern at Ferrybridge/Portland Harbour.

No immigrants made it into the Obs garden moth-traps overnight, but during the evening a Diamond-back Moth was attracted to a lighted window at the Obs.



Kingfisher and Sandwich Tern - Portland Harbour, 28th January 2016 © Pete Saunders

...and also thanks to Pete Saunders for a photo of this colour-ringed Great Black-backed Gull that was at Ferrybridge the day before yesterday; Fabrice Gallien has kindly let us know that it was ringed as a nestling on 23rd June last year across the Channel at Chausey, Normandy - an area whence a fair number of our 'non-local' Great Black-backs seem to originate:


And continuing our current mission of making more of our data accessible online, we've cobbled together a spreadsheet of our daily ringing totals that'll be easy to keep up-to-date in tandem with the daily blog updates - fairly obviously there's precious little going on at the moment, but just wait until the spring...