27th October

No doubt about today's feature species with new Pallas's Warblers showing up at both Thumb Lane and the Obs. As has become the routine, their arrival wasn't in tandem with numbers of common numbers as it remained quiet on the ground everywhere: a handful of new Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs and 'crests, popped up here and there, a lingering late Reed Warbler was still about and 2 Short-eared Owls and a Merlin were logged. Overhead passage was far stronger, with 966 Goldfinches, 336 Starlings, 326 Linnets, 205 Jackdaws, 125 Meadow Pipits, 94 Skylarks, 90 Chaffinches and 85 Wood Pigeons the pick of the totals from the Bill. A good feeding flock of 200 Gannets close inshore at the Bill didn't attract anything else of particular note.

If you take enough photographs of a Pallas's Warbler eventually you're just about able to piece together most of the features...




...even then we failed to get a decent rump shot so we've had to trawl through the rejects from earlier in the week for that missing field mark! © Martin Cade:


In our experience Pallas's Warblers aren't especially vocal on passage - at least, nowhere near as much as Yellow-browed Warblers are - but today's bird obliged with several bursts of frequent calling; here are a few examples picked from a particularly noisy five minutes or so: