11th August

With almost the whole of the night and a good part of the early morning blighted by thick fog there weren't high hopes migrant-wise. However, in the event more managed to make landfall than had been expected and there was a fair spread of Wheatears, Sedge Warblers, Whitethroats and Willow Warblers at the Bill; a Lesser Whitethroat was also unearthed there, the first signs of Robin passage were detected in the mist-nets and once the fog cleared a steady trickle of passing Sand Martins eventually totalled towards 200. Although seawatching was impossible for a good part of the morning 3 Arctic Skuas were noticed taking the short cut over Ferrybridge; waders numbers there looked to have dropped a little, with singles of Knot and Common Sandpiper the best on offer.

It's been a good early autumn for Arctic Skuas but so thick was this morning's fog that these three birds sneaking through over Ferrybridge very nearly escaped being added to the tally - you wonder if they even realised that the rest of Portland existed © Pete Saunders:



It's popularly supposed that Portland Peregrines prey largely on pigeons and Starlings but Trevor Owens has been tapping into an interesting if slightly macabre event that shows their diet is a good deal more varied. Trevor works at Portland Port where a pair of Peregrines have taken to settling on a workshop roof to consume their prey; he believes that many of the victims are caught at night as the whole port area is brightly lit and, besides, several of them seem to be things that a Peregrine would be unlikely to encounter by day. Thus far Trevor's recorded the remains of the likes of Dunlin, Knot, Snipe, Black-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Common Tern, Wheatear and Pied Flycatcher, some of which feature in this gallery of grisly finds © Trevor Owens: