14th August




http://www.at-infocus.co.uk/ 
A reminder that there's an In Focus field event at the Obs between 10am and 4pm this Tuesday, 16th August.

A waft of north-easterly at dawn made a very welcome change from the Atlantic winds we'd got so used to even if the crystal clear skies hardly promised much in the way of numbers. In the event there was a little more about than in recent days, with 6 Wheatears, 5 Whitethroats, 4 Sedge Warblers, 3 Yellow-legged Gulls, 2 Grasshopper Warblers and singles of Snipe, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Redstart and Spotted Flycatcher accompanying the 40 Willow Warbler that made up the bulk of numbers on the ground at the Bill; overhead passage there included 4 Tree Pipits and 2 Yellow Wagtails, with a few tardy Swifts also still in evidence everywhere. Odds and ends through on the sea at the Bill included 3 Manx Shearwaters and a lone Balearic Shearwater. A Little Stint was a brief new arrival at Ferrybridge.

On the lepidoptera front a Black Arches was a stray of note in the Obs moth-traps but conventional immigrants remained very poorly represented. By day, 6 Clouded Yellows passed through along Chesil Beach, with several Painted Ladys, another Clouded Yellow and 2 Hummingbird Hawk-moths making the list from other sites.



Common Buzzard and Redshank - Ferrybridge, 14th August 2016 © Pete Saunders (Buzzard) and Debby Saunders (Redshank)