14th September

The first really wildly windy day of the autumn, with a stiff south-easterly and rain through the night replaced by a blasting south-westerly through the daylight hours. Not surprisingly, most attention was given to the sea where although Gannets were moving through in force - including a sample count of 840 off the Bill in 2 hours during the morning - there wasn't too much else to show for the efforts, with 12 Balearic Shearwaters, 2 Manx Shearwaters, 2 Great Skuas and an Arctic Skua the best off the Bill. The land was far too blown out to have expected much of a return and there were no oddities found amongst the handful of common migrants logged at the Bill.

Ringed Plover - Ferrybridge, 14th September 2105 © Martin Cade

 

 And to finish off, some sounds from last week. Nick Hopper was with us for three nights mid-week and found it to be considerably busier than thus far this autumn; nocturnal highlights were Knot and Arctic Tern, whilst other migrants of interest included Sandwich Tern, 2 Common Snipe, Green Sandpiper, Dunlin, 3 Yellow Wagtails, 2 Robins, several Pied/Spotted Flycatchers (separating these two species is proving troublesome at the moment) and good numbers of Tree Pipits:
 

  

Nick has also got into the habit of leaving the recorder running well on into the morning and was rewarded with an Ortolan Bunting passing overhead on Wednesday - a day with no sightings/hearings of this species from the field birders!: