12th August

The weather's single-handed offensive to re-green Portland has been well and truly underway. As is expected from a day where it rained and blew a gale most of the morning, many of todays migrants came from the sea. The highlight came in the form of a very close Sooty Shearwater, other than this, numbers were remarkably disappointing with: 5 Common Scoter, 3 Great Skuas, 21 Manx Shearwaters and 14 Balearic Shearwaters. 3 Yellow-legged Gulls were mingling with the ever present gull flock. Land-migrants remained thin on the ground even after the deluge had passed with just a single Swift, 2 Willow Warblers and 1 Wheatear

Ferrybridge suffered a similarly wet fate, however, 13 Sandwich Terns performed well. Other than this, 14 Sanderling and 3 Turnstones were the only additions to the totals.

Moths were also in poor form with just 3 Silver Y, 2 Diamond-back Moths and 2 Dark Sword Grass

The Ferrybridge Sandwich Terns put on an entertaining display despite the grotty weather © Pete Saunders:


And as is well known, it doesn't just take grotty conditions for us to be lazy enough to do an awful lot of our routine autumn seawatching from indoors at the Obs. Although you'll almost always get the best views of things by taking the trouble to watch from the Bill tip itself there's a surprising amount to be said for watching from the shelter of the more elevated viewpoint at the Obs (the close proximity to a kettle does no harm either) from where the views are often perfectly adequate © Martin Cade