21st October

With barely a sniff of a change in the conditions it was no surprise that the birding remained very samey, with 2 Yellow-browed Warblers at both the Obs and Southwell School, 2 Ring Ouzels at the Verne, singles of Black Redstart at the Bill and Blacknor, and singles of Firecrest and Yellowhammer at the Bill providing some pretty low-key highlights around the island. Grounded totals included 25 each of Chiffchaff, Goldcrest and Reed Bunting at the Bill, whilst 500 Wood Pigeons overhead there was as good as it got on the visible passage front.

A miscellaneous selection of other natural history interest included a Vagrant Emperor dragonfly and 4 Red-veined Darters seen in the Cheyne Weare/Church Ope Cove area during the afternoon, another 2 Radford's Flame Shoulders trapped overnight at the Obs and a Brown Long-eared Bat caught at dawn in a mist-net at the Obs.

*If Steven Guy happens to look in on the blog do please get in touch as we'd very much like to share your photos of the Vagrant Emperor here*

There was a time when bats were caught quite frequently in the Obs garden mist-nets but that certainly hasn't been the case for some years so it quite a novelty when this Brown Long-eared Bat was trapped there at dawn; we have several old records of this species having been caught at the Obs and it'll be interesting to see if the static bat detector deployed there provides evidence that they're resident or just strays/migrants © Martin Cade/Fergus Henderson: