30th May

A small joke from yesterday's blog has horribly backfired today as we don't even have a flock of swans to tout as our highlight of the day! Perhaps we're being a little glib: a Cuckoo at Barleycrates was only the fifth record for the year of what's becoming an increasingly scarce migrant here. It has been a very good year for Yellow Wagtails (potentially should have been expected given last autumn's ringing totals), and today continued the trend with another three late birds. Other migrants were extremely hard to come by with just singles of Spotted Flycatcher, Willow Warbler and the Obs garden breeding pair of Chiffchaffs. The sea was equally disappointing with just four Sandwich Terns and 2 Great Northern Divers of note off the Bill.

The first Emperors emerged from the Obs pond today (the first sighting of the year was yesterday near the Verne) and rather unusually they remained by the pond all afternoon and began laying immediately © Erin Taylor:


Big eyes and a cracking moustache, what's not to like? © Pete Saunders