Portland Bird Observatory and Field Centre: 24th June

With the Southward end of the island entirely fog bound for most of the day, it was unsurprising that the most common captures in the nets were Great Tits. Slightly more surprising was the fact that todays tallies pushed the year total of Great Tits over 100 breaking the all time record. As you may have surmised from the fact that the first half of this blog is about Great Tits the rest of the day list was somewhat limited, however, the first returning Sand Martin of the year was recorded as well as four Reed Warblers (across the entire recording area), 2 new Blackcaps and a new Chiffchaff. Ferrybridge saw a marginal increase in interest as the pair of Whimbrel were joined by 10 Dunlin, 12 Mediterranean Gulls and a Redshank. On the invertebrate front, the Painted Lady influx really got going with many hundreds logged by the end of the day.