29th August

Unbroken sunshine and a westerly breeze weren't the conditions to expect an arrival on the ground but overhead passage was steady, with hirundines moving as opposed to lingering as they had been yesterday: departing Swallows numbered well up around the 500 mark and outnumbered Sand Martins by 4 to 1; oddly, House Martins hardly featured after their excesses yesterday; Tree Pipits, Grey and Yellow Wagtails were all more prominent than of late although in totals still far below what might be expected in late August. Nothing was at all numerous on the ground but the likes of the long-staying Marsh Harrier and 2 Grasshopper Warblers at the Bill, a Pied Flycatcher at Bowers Quarry and a Yellow-legged Gull at Ferrybridge provided little morsels of interest amongst the more mundane fare. Shearwaters continued to pass in some quantity, particularly early in the morning when 1350 Manx and 140 Balearics were logged at the Bill, along with 200 Mediterranean Gulls and 2 Arctic Skuas.

We haven't been able to spend a lot of time on gulls just lately but there are still a few young Yellow-legged Gulls popping up from time to time - through a combination of moult and wear they're now looking very different to how they looked when they first arrived in July; this was one of two at Ferrybridge yesterday evening:

Good numbers of Lesser Black-backs are also about - many of them are active migrants departing to the south but there are plenty like this swarthy youngster also at Ferrybridge yesterday evening just sitting about taking it easy © Martin Cade:

A moth that immediately caught our eye in this morning's moth-traps (in fact there was a second individual when we got to another of the traps) was this apparent Hoary Footman. We do have quite a few records of this species but they're mostly from quite a few years ago and, since we find the differentiation between this species and worn specimens of the commoner Scarce Footman to sometimes be really tricky, we do fret that we're overlooking a few Hoarys: 

Anyway, this specimen looked the part and a check of the hindwing - off-white as opposed to yellow - did nothing to dispel that belief. We'll likely retain one of the two so we can check for absolute sure but certainly something to look out for in island moth-traps in the next few days if there's a bit of an arrival of them afoot (there were 4 Porter's Rustics and a miscellany of other scarce-ish migrants in the traps as well so we guess the Hoarys have arrived from the continent) © Martin Cade