With a northeasterly airflow firmly established and the news services dropping juicy morsels by the minute, being a rarity-seeking birder on the island today had something of the feel of being a particle physicist searching for dark matter - you knew it was there but you just couldn't detect it. Sadly, whatever it was remained undetected all day, with a trapped
Mealy Redpoll, an overflying party of 9
Barnacle Geese, a passing
Hen Harrier and the lingering
Snow Bunting as good as it got on the scarcity front. At a local level, passing waterfowl were entertaining with 15
Brent Geese, 11
Pintail, 5
Teal, 2
Wigeon, a
Mallard and a
Red-breasted Merganser all relatively high-value birds amongst the 300
Mediterranean Gulls, 100
Common Gulls, 30
Common Scoter and 19
Cormorants also logged on the sea. Overhead passage didn't reach the levels of some recent days, with 9700
Wood Pigeons, 585
Stock Doves, 410
Jackdaws, 270
Chaffinches, 17
Redwings, 14
Fieldfares, 14
Greenfinches, 7
Siskins, 3
Lapwings and a single
Golden Plover the bulk of the tally over the Bill. Grounded arrivals remained thinly spread, with 2
Short-eared Owls (and the remains of another recently predated individual) and singles of
Wheatear,
Dartford Warbler and
Firecrest the best of it amongst the few
Blackcaps,
Chiffchaffs and
Goldcrests at the Bill.
For us, the Mealy Redpoll was a very exciting bird: we had a redpoll lure deployed beside one of the mist-nets in the Crown Estate Field and on doing a round of the nets we flushed the bird at point blank range from some weeds near the net and as it fluttered away it looked arrestingly frosty, with gleaming white wing-bars and rump - an absolutely nailed-on Mealy just with the naked eye! Still at extremely close range it then posed rather beautifully for some photos before proving to be the easiest of birds to walk straight into a net - if only everything behaved like that © Martin Cade...
...and © John Martin:
Proper wild Barnacle Geese in full migratory flight high over the Bill - none of this goose dross that circulates around Dorset for most of the rest of the year © Nick Hopper:
We're sure there must be the odd other 'ordinary' Wheatear left in Britain but you get the feel from the rarity news that we must have been very unlucky that today's bird wasn't either a Desert or an Isabelline © John Martin:
The Bill Snow Bunting and one of quite a few Clouded Yellows still about there © John Martin:
The Red-headed Chestnut tally advances to 7 in the last four nights with another single last night at the Obs; otherwise, migrant moth numbers continue to drop as the nights get progressively windier and chillier
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— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) November 3, 2026 at 10:47 AM
There was some discussion amongst birders about the Wheatear that popped up at the end of my little Snow bunting video. I've only ever seen Northern wheatear so can't be sure but she looks like a Northern female to me. (And if only that second shot had been sharp!)
#PortlandBirdingThe Snow bunting at Portland Bill earlier, in a brisk very chilly wind. Do watch to the end when a little avian surprise pops up!
#Portland #DorsetBirding
