4th October

Another nice pulse of overhead passage today but the strength of the brisk westerly continued to be a bother when it came to working for grounded migrants. Linnets are in the ascendancy now and at 300 in the first hour of the day over the Bill were up to half of the Meadow Pipit total; everything else that might have been expected put in fairly respectable showings, with 4 Tree Sparrows over the Bill - the first here for two years - and a Honey Buzzard over Southwell nice bonuses. On the ground it wasn't easy to get amongst any quantity of migrants but the lingering Cattle Egret at the Grove and a Lesser Whitethroat (most likely of eastern affinity although that wasn't established for sure) at the Bill were of interest. Sea interest has dwindled right away in recent days, with 4 Balearic Shearwaters off the Bill and an Arctic Skua over Ferrybridge today's only worthwhile sightings.

A couple of days ago we mentioned our crass ineptitude in losing whilst we were trying to photograph it a specimen of Olive Ermine Zelleria oleastrella - a new moth for Portland - that John Lucas had kindly brought us. Although everyone present had seen the moth and there was no doubt about the ID, in this and age there's something deeply unsatisfactory about not having an image - it's almost as though the record doesn't count! Anyway, what we hadn't appreciated at the time was that John had already taken a single 'in-pot' record shot with his phone which we're extremely pleased to be able to feature here - not only is our bacon saved but it's a perfectly satisfactory photo that shows all the necessary features © John Lucas:


Also of interest, we've heard back from Martin Collinson that the dislodged feather from our Marsh Warbler on 31st August has been analysed by his team at the University of Aberdeen and the cytochrome b extracted has fully confirmed the ID; in the circumstances - it was trapped in the half-light of dawn - this bird could quite easily have been overlooked so a good spot by Mark Cutts and another nice reward for his perseverance at Culverwell © Martin Cade: