1st February

There used to be a time when cold weather movements were pretty straightforward: it snowed on the mainland and Portland filled up with displaced refugees and was a great watchpoint for observing birds fleeing high overhead towards the Continent. If that's the norm then the last year has been much more unconventional: the island missed out to a great extent during the infamous 'Beast from the East' back in March 2018, whilst today came up with a largely northbound passage of birds. Overnight snowfall was restricted to the higher parts of the island and, apart from not amounting to much, had largely disappeared by dawn; however, in rapid response to more distant snowfall quantities of Golden Plovers could be heard on the move over the Bill throughout the night (we logged 24 flocks at the Obs in a two and three-quarter hour sound recording session from 1am before the batteries in the recorder died!) and it was this species that returned the best numbers from the early rounds after dawn. Before long though Redwings begun arriving from the southwest and these proved to be the precursors to a steady day-long passage - plenty lingered for periods on the unfrozen horse paddocks throughout the island but the general impression was of a constant throughput of birds, this being further confirmed by observations at Ferrybridge during the afternoon where there was a constant passage of flocks leaving to the northwest along Chesil. With no particular flyway favoured it was really difficult to get any sort of handle on numbers but it seems unlikely there were fewer than 10000 Redwings in total. Back-up day-totals - again, informed guesses rather than accurate counts - included 2000 Fieldfares, 800 Golden Plovers, 250 Lapwings and a Mistle Thrush, whilst there were modest increases of a few dozens in the totals of grounded Skylarks, Meadow Pipits and Linnets; further incongruous sights included Common Gulls, Black-headed Gulls and a Mediterranean Gull grounded in the East Cliff fields where they're customarily most infrequent. The likes of Woodcock, Snipe and Jack Snipe were completely absent. Routine fare making the list included 3 Purple Sandpipers, a Short-eared Owl and a Chiffchaff at the Bill, 5 Red-throated Divers and a Shelduck through on the sea there, 3 Blackcaps at Southwell, 2 Black Redstarts at both Church Ope Cove and Chesil Cove and a single at Reap Lane, 167 Brent Geese and a Redshank at Ferrybridge and 4 Black-necked Grebes, a Slavonian Grebe and a Common Scoter in Portland Harbour.

Quite apart from it being dull as ditchwater all day we were enjoying the spectacle too much to bother with photographing things; however, this Redwing did oblige for a moment at the Obs and the camera was close to hand © Martin Cade: