14th September

September's pretty well always the best month for variety at Portland and today's migrant miscellany was nothing if not varied. The weather too did its best to rise to the occasion, throwing in everything from rain at dawn to a still, bright and sultry afternoon. The second Common Rosefinch of the year, 2 Wrynecks and a Turtle Dove provided some nice scarcity interest at the Bill, where seasonalable commoner migrants were nearly all represented if far from plentiful; 4 Reed Warblers, 2 Snipe and a Purple Sandpiper on the land there, 7 Balearic Shearwaters, 4 Arctic Skuas and a Great Skua through on the sea and a Golden Plover at Ferrybridge were among the more interesting constituents.

Usually a rather maligned scarcity, we've always had a bit of a soft-spot for Common Rosefinch and there can be no denying that seen close-up youngsters like today's bird are rather nice, crisply-marked things - certainly a cut above the likes of the moulting juvenile Goldfinches and Linnets that are our staple in-hand finches right now © Martin Cade: 




Talking of neat, crisply-marked birds, there's not a lot wrong with a nice Golden Plover at this time of year © Debby Saunders:


And excuse us whilst we just tinker with ideas to jazz up the blog (...and make our life easier by not having to repeat everything umpteen times!) - in this case we were wondering about maybe embedding a few interesting Tweets from the day