19th September

http://www.at-infocus.co.uk/


A reminder that there's an In Focus field event at the Obs between 10am and 4pm this Saturday, 22nd September.

A pretty pitiful day as far as birds were concerned, impressive as far as wind speed and sea swell go. The highlights came from outside the traditional obs recording area and were instead off Chesil and Ferrybridge with Black Tern, and Grey Phalarope respectively. Chesil also harboured a pair of Arctic Terns and Ferrybridge saw: 64 Dunlin, 23 Ringed Plover, 7 Turnstone, 2 Sanderling and 1 Yellow-legged Gull. The Verne saw the highlight of the passerines today with a pair of Pied Flycatchers (we thought they'd all been blown away).

Around the Obs the sea was relatively quiet with just 7 Balearic Shearwaters, 2 Manx Shearwaters, 2 Common Scoters and 2 Sandwich Terns. Other migrants were pretty thin on the ground with 1 Yellow-legged Gull, 16 Wheatears, A Spotted Flycatcher, 103 Swallows and a lone House Martin.

We never cease to be amazed at the resolving capabilities of cheap and cheerful bridge cameras: a good half-hour after sunset it was as much as we could do to even make out this evening's Grey Phalarope with conventional optics but with the camera it wasn't too difficult to get what amounted to perfectly acceptable record images/video in the semi darkness © Martin Cade: