14th August

Yesterday's little pulse of passage rapidly fizzled out, with today's seemingly ideal conditions producing precious little by way of numbers on the land. Overflying Tree Pipits - 15 in all - featured most strongly amongst what little there was at the Bill, with 7 Yellow Wagtails and 2 Common Sandpipers providing the only other minor interest on the land there. The sea was more interesting, with at least 50 Balearic Shearwaters again ever-present offshore; 34 Common Scoter, 9 Manx Shearwaters, 4 Arctic Skuas, 3 Great Skuas and a Yellow-legged Gull also passed through or lingered there.

Overnight mothing was as low-key as the birding, with 15 Dark Sword Grass, 8 each of Rush Veneer and Rusty-dot Pearl, and 5 Silver Y constituting the immigrant tally at the Obs.

We suspect that it isn't widely appreciated just how few of the common migrants passing through Portland appear to enter or leave the country via the island during subsequent migration seasons; of course, we only have the ringing evidence to support our assumptions here (...and so it may be that more ringed migrants simply miss the nets during subsequent visits than appears to be the case) but today's Sedge Warbler, that was previously ringed on 30th July last year, is one of fewer than 10 subsequent recaptures of migrants that don't breed here during the whole history of the Obs - with a sample size of what's probably now well past 250,000 it certainly seems like most migrants don't use the same entry and exit points each year © Martin Cade: 


We don't very often mention the many ringed Mediterranean Gulls that it's possible to see these days at Ferrybridge, largely because most of those that we do hear about seem to have originated in 'expected' areas of continental Europe. However, these two birds from yesterday seemed to be slightly different to usual: green RV0X was ringed as a nestling in Vendee, western France, on 1st July, whilst yellow 2C65 was ringed as a nestling at Langstone Harbour on 28th June; western France and the UK may be regular points of origin but we don't recollect having heard them mentioned before this © Pete Saunders (and thanks to Debby Saunders for taking the trouble to submit these sightings):