11th April

Still no much sign of the sort of conditions likely to drop migrants in quantity, with rarely enough cloud in the sky to even cover the sun for more than a few minutes at a time. Numbers and variety remained at a ticking-over level, with totals of 75 Willow Warblers, 30 Wheatears, 20 Chiffchaffs, 10 Blackcaps, 6 Redstarts, 3 Common Sandpipers and singles of White Wagtail, Black Redstart and Firecrest making up the bulk of the grounded tally at the Bill/Southwell; elsewhere, a Golden Plover was new at Ferrybridge. Visible passage was slower than might have been expected but did include singles of Golden Plover and Yellow Wagtail amongst the trickle of hirundines over the Bill. The breeze was again firmly from an offshore direction and sea passage included little more than 48 Common Scoter, 8 Red-throated Divers, a Whimbrel and an Arctic Skua through off the Bill.

After the relative drabness of the Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers that have made up the bulk of the numbers so far this spring, it's nice to now being seeing some Redstarts injecting a splash of colour into proceedings; this one was at Southwell this afternoon © Pete Saunders:

The first Greenland/Iceland Wheatears of the spring showed up yesterday and a couple of strapping males were trapped and ringed this morning © Martin Cade:

We didn't have time last evening to mention yesterday's 'control' Pied Flycatcher © Martin Cade:

...we won't know for a while where this bird was first ringed but, if it was ringed as a nestling, there's a strong chance it was from somewhere in Wales and the Marches: the map below shows our ringing recoveries to or from breeding sites and the cluster in that area is striking, with Powys, Gwynedd and Dyfed accounting for more than 50% of all the recoveries: