4th April

Despite a pleasant enough start and end a prolonged punctuation of drizzly rain through the middle put paid to today's aspirations to match yesterday's interest - as much because the advancing rain had likely prevented migrants from moving in quantity. It was actually the sea rather than the land that was worth most attention, with - mainly by dint of far longer coverage - the Bill returning slightly better totals than Chesil: 192 Manx Shearwaters, 94 Kittiwakes, 40 Common Scoter, 36 Sandwich Terns, 10 Arctic Skuas and 5 Red-throated Divers made up the bulk of the Bill's all-day tally, with some of these totals almost matched in a pre-rain session at Chesil. The migrant situation on the land was something of nothing: most of commoner species that might be expected showed up, but in numbers that aren't really worth a mention; totals of 4 Redstarts, 4 Firecrests and 1 Great Spotted Woodpecker provided easily the best of the quality around the south of the island.

We ran out of time last night to get round to uploading a couple of nocturnal recordings from the first of Nick Hopper's latest two sampling nights. The night of 31st March/1st April turned out to be pretty uneventful for numbers but did include interest in the form of a Sandwich Tern, 2 Moorhens and some Short-eared Owl activity, including their shorter call: