An exodus of Balearics today with just 2 logged off the Bill; freshening wind through the afternoon saw a few dozen Manx getting moving offshore. Steady trickle of Swifts sw over the Bill through the mrng. First Grayling of the yr on the wing at Tout Quarry
— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) Jun 27, 2024 at 22:03
Roseate Tern just gone east off the Bill
— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) Jun 27, 2024 at 7:46
Little Ringed Plover south over the Bill 0620, Wheatear about as well
— Debra Saunders (@debbyseamist.bsky.social) Jun 27, 2024 at 7:06
After a few weeks of not really bothering with systematic recording we've been giving the nocmig recorder a few outings this week as the early autumn wader season gets underway. Waders might have proved to be hard to come by but there's been some entertainment in the form of Guillemots audible through each night. We could get far better recording of these seasonable vocalisations by going over to the auk colony on West Cliffs but the weather's been so calm and birds so noisy that the nocmig recorder deployed at the Obs - several hundred metres from the sea - has been picking up some of the action as the little jumplings and their attendant parents are carried away eastwards on the tide off East Cliffs. In this sequence from just before midnight last evening the adults are presumably making the braying calls (this is the same call they use to call the youngsters off the cliffs) to keep in touch in the darkness with the youngsters that can be heard giving bursts of their shriller piping calls; we don't know how many youngsters left the cliffs last evening but the last contact calling between them and the adults was faintly audible way off in the distance at 03.25am:
The warm and increasingly humid nights earlier this week saw moth interest pick up quite dramatically. A good selection of local specials are now on the wing including Samphire Knot-horn Epischnia asteris...
The main interest from our point of views concerned the selection of strays and dispersers that are customary in this sort of weather. The most interesting of these was what looks to be a Yarrow Pug from John Lucas' garden at Southwell; we do have at least one now long-ago previous record for the island that maybe ought to be revisited but it looks as though any records for Dorset are good ones - the county website mentions only 6 records in total:
