30th March

A windy but often surprisingly pleasant day with it feeling quite warm in any shelter. The sea was always going to get most attention and always entertained even if the rewards were hardly spectacular. A good movement of 33 Red-throated Divers highlighted but gulls were always a feature, with a steady passage that included 215 Kittiwakes, 80 Common Gulls and 16 Mediterranean Gulls; standard fare for this date such as Common Scoters, Manx Shearwaters and Sandwich Terns all featured but not in worthwhile totals. The land was always hard going in the breeze, with 2 each of Black Redstart and Firecrest the best amongst the handful of Wheatears and phylloscs scattered on the ground at the Bill, where the odd few Swallows passed through overhead. Elsewhere, 25 Brent Geese and 8 Sandwich Terns passed through at Ferrybridge.

Red-throated Divers trundled through offshore all morning, with the majority now in top-notch summer plumage...


...Kittiwakes aside, most of the smaller gulls passing though like these Mediterranean Gulls are now in varying degrees of immature plumage


...however, there are still a few super-smart breeding plumage Common Gulls in the mix © Martin Cade:


Passerine migrants have been in such short supply that it's hardly surprising that this Chiffchaff from a couple of days ago is the first bird that we've handled this year that was bearing someone else's ring - in this case a relatively routine recovery since it was ringed last October in Leicestershire © Martin Cade:


However, its capture does enable us to draw attention to a project we've been engaged in for the last few weeks. It's long been our intention to pull together in one accessible place all of our ringing recoveries and to this end Jodie's been working on how best to present these and has begun to construct interactive maps for each species - the map is zoomable and clickable so give it a try: