The sun rose behind a thick blanket of cloud with heavy rain battering the observatory windows.
By 7am the front had passed over was replaced by light cloud and a moderate breeze. A few nets were opened with the prospect of some grounded migrants. Unfortunately that was not the case. Sedge and Willow Warbler just about making double figures and a fly over Tree Pipit the best we could do.
The sea watching saved the day with at least four Cory's Shearwaters making an appearance during the morning. Also seen were 38 Balearic and 6 Manx Shearwaters, a flock of 35 Common Scoter, an Arctic Skua and a single Whimbrel
Last month, a few us were discussing Inaturalist and various other apps that allow you to identify flora and fauna from a single image. There are pros and cons to all of these things but used sensibly they can often be spot-on with their species identification.
For those not familiar with these nature identification apps, there are many, Google Lens, Obsidentify, Seek, PictureThis etc. They all use pattern recognition technology to analyse your image of the natural world, be it, plant, bird, bug or animal and compare it to millions of similar images on the world wide web. It then gives you it's "best guess" at the species name or sometimes just the genus or family. A lot of the time this is very dependent on the quality of the image. It combines the image with the phones built in location services ability to prioritize the results that should be present in or around that location.
Here is a link to video tutorial of how to use to the app in the field.
