12th April

A quieter day than yesterday with only a light scatter of new arrivals dropped from a largely clear sky. An Osprey that snuck over at Barleycrates Lane late in the morning and the lingering Ring Ouzel at the Bill were about as good as it got on the ground, where common migrant totals at the Bill included 50 Willow Warblers, 40 Chiffchaffs and 20 Blackcaps, with 6 Yellow Wagtails, 3 White Wagtails, 2 Black Redstarts, 2 Firecrests, a Mistle Thrush, the first Sedge Warbler of the season and the Green Woodpecker the pick of the less frequent arrivals; the 'Eastern' Lesser Whitethroat at Southwell, a Grasshopper Warbler at Blacknor and a White Wagtail at Ferrybridge were the best on offer elsewhere.

The Ring Ouzel was today's crowd-puller (...we were astonished to discover that, as another rather dispiriting example of what modern birding's come to, it was even being twitched by birders from neighbouring counties) © Richard Phillips:


...but from our point of view the bird of the day was the Green Woodpecker that put on its best show so far as it paused in the Hut Fields during yet another lap of the island in what must be an increasingly frustrating quest for a mate © Geoff Orton:




...and finally, it'll be of no interest to anyone from the mainland but just for the Portland archives it was nice to capture one burst of advertising song from the woodpecker: