11th May

Yesterday's weather upturn was maintained and by the calm, sunny late afternoon it had begun to feel really pleasant. A little flourish of Spotted Flycatchers - about a dozen around the south of the island with many looking to be moving straight through - another steady arrival of Swallows and the highest total of Swifts to date (only 22 so hardly anything to shout about) provided the day's numbers that, together with ones and twos of a range of other routine May fare, lent at least a suggestion of everything not quite being over to the day's proceedings. Sea interest has been gradually subsiding and in an offshore breeze that trend continued, with 3 Great Northern Divers and a Yellow-legged Gull the best of what relatively was on the move off the Bill.

Even though breeding wasn't proved, one of last year's most welcome events was the re-occupation of the cliffs inside the QinetiQ compound by good numbers of Kittiwakes. This year they're back and by the look of it they've increased considerably; unfortunately a lot of the action looks to be taking place out of sight in the middle section of the cliffs but on the visible northern section there are several apparent pairs settled on the former breeding ledges even if we couldn't see any evidence that they've yet begun nest-building. Fingers crossed that they remain in residence and start breeding © Martin Cade: