26th August

Strive as we might it proved impossible to break through a ceiling of mediocrity today, with even the assistance of heavily overcast skies throughout the morning and the continuing northeasterly breeze failing to provide us with any of seasonable scarcities that had seemed so on the cards at dawn. That blanket dismissal of the day was of course entirely unfair to the pretty respectable spread of routine mid-autumn migrants that were uncovered and amounted to, for example, 150 Wheatears, 100 Yellow Wagtails, 20 Spotted Flycatchers and 10 Pied Flycatchers dotted about the centre and south of the island. At that level and below everything that might have been expected put in appearances but a list of oddities that started and stopped at a single Hobby over the Bill was lean enough to leave the feeling that we'd been short-changed. The sea was barely any better, with 3 Arctic Skuas and an early Great Northern Diver through off the Bill hardly constituting a watch to remember.