21st September

After a stormy night that brought the heaviest rainfall for some weeks dawn broke clear and bright but no less windy. The clear skies prompted a surge in Meadow Pipit passage, with 1200 through at the Bill where another 700 were grounded; single of Grey Heron, Merlin and Golden Plover were also on the move overhead, whilst 4 White Wagtails were the pick of the otherwise meagre offerings on the ground. With the wind having veered into the northwest sea passage was limited to just 4 Balearic Shearwaters through off the Bill, with a brief Grey Phalarope at Chesil Cove and a grounded Gannet at Ferrybridge the only other seabirds of note.

The grounded Gannet was an unusual sight at Ferrybridge; we don't usually hold out much hope for seabirds in this sort of stricken state but evidently it was seen to take to the air on several occasions so with a bit of luck might just have been an exhausted storm-driven bird © Mike Lockyear:

Being paupers just lately when it comes to scarcities we took to begging some quality from Weymouth in the evening and returned for another helping of the Spotted Crake that had first shown up yesterday at Lodmoor. The era when Spotted Crake was a bread-and-butter autumn migrant at Radipole is an almost forgotten memory so it was nice to be able to gross out on some decent views of today's bird in just the sort of lovely habitat that used to be such a productive feature of Radipole in its heyday © Martin Cade: