2nd May

The proverbial day of two halves, with a horribly wet morning giving way to a gloriously sunny afternoon. The rain had begun relatively early in the night and looked to have put the block on most migration with only a relatively thin spread of new arrivals evident once the clearance arrived: the 2 Golden Orioles remained in Top Fields but 10 Redstarts was the only worthwhile migrant total logged at the Bill where a single passing Hobby was of additional note. An almost instant switch from a promising southeasterly to a hopeless northwesterly as the rain cleared restricted sea passage to little more than an hour of action when 124 commic terns, 3 Great Skuas, 2 each of Great Northern Diver and Arctic Skua, and singles of Red-throated Diver, Black-throated Diver and Pomarine Skua passed through off the Bill and 510 commic terns pulsed through at Chesil; later, 2 Pomarine Skuas and 2 Arctic Terns were off Chesil Cove.