Elsewhere on the island, Penn Castle continued to provide with singles of Black Redstart and Firecrest, a couple of Goldcrests and three Chiffchaffs.
Despite the large amount of suitable habitat, its always a nice surprise when one of the Little Owls is feeling cooperative © Erin Taylor
Migration action's hardly got into first gear just yet and we're very much still at the clutching at straws level of getting excited with things like high flying Grey Wagtails arriving in/off. What happens to all the Grey Wags that we watch leaving out to sea during the autumn? We have a tiny bit of ringing evidence to suggest that some actually about turn and end up wintering in southern England but you'd imagine that most must surely make it to France. Of the several hundred that we count departing each autumn we're lucky if many more than half-a-dozen are logged returning the next spring - have the others all just succumbed during the winter or do they return by another route? This sort of question could probably be asked about a whole host of migrants but maybe because they're so audibly obvious it seems to be Grey Wagtail that we always end up pondering on... © Martin Cade:
