12th March

A nice mild airflow setting in ought to be just the ticket at this juncture but unfortunately it arrived in tandem with another dose of rain and a much fresher southwesterly that undid all the promising groundwork put in by the quiet conditions of the last couple of days. There were a few new arrivals about but they weren't at all numerous and getting to grips with them wasn't much fun: Chiffchaff just about got into double figures at the Bill where singles of Wheatear and Goldcrest were also grounded; Meadow Pipits were certainly arriving overhead but their passage wasn't tapped into in any meaningful way. The only rewards from the brisker conditions offshore were 15 Brent Geese and 2 Red-throated Divers through off the Bill.

Having handled a couple of birds bearing rings from elsewhere in the last few days reminded us of a nice recovery of one of our birds that we'd recently been notified of: a Sparrowhawk ringed at the Obs last September was found freshly dead a couple of weeks ago at Porthscatho, Cornwall...

...The majority of our recoveries and controls of Sparrowhawks are relatively local and probably largely involve Portland breeding birds. However, in addition to the movement to Cornwall reported above we have a couple of other longer-distance recoveries on our books: one ringed south of London during the breeding season was recovered here in the autumn of the same year and, more spectacularly, one ringed here on autumn passage was recovered during the next breeding season in southern Norway: