Another gorgeous day but, after a very clear night, there was seemingly a clear-out of grounded migrants with relatively few newcomers arriving in their place. The clear skies were again conducive for overhead migrants to get going, with 25000 Wood Pigeons, 2300 Jackdaws, 170 Starlings, 140 Chaffinches, 135 Linnets, 70 Meadow Pipits, 60 Skylarks, 20 Siskins, 11 Greenfinches, 11 Reed Buntings, 9 Bramblings, 4 Redpolls and a Serin amongst the movers at the Bill. On the ground, the combination of new and old included 3 Black Redstarts, 3 Firecrests and singles of Merlin, Mistle Thrush and Cirl Bunting at the Bill, singles of Woodcock, Dartford Warbler and Hawfinch in the Coombefield/Suckthumb area, the first Siberian Chiffchaff of the autumn and a Firecrest at the Grove, a Yellow-browed Warbler at Portland Castle and the Red-necked Grebe in Portland Harbour; there were still some quite good pockets of Chiffchaffs and other commoner migrants here and there but generally it was quieter on the ground than it has been for a while. Offshore, a small arrival of Balearic Shearwaters saw up to 10 linger off the Bill, where a Great Northern Diver passed by and 250 Mediterranean Gulls lingered.
Unless by some mightily unlikely chance it gets to be examined in the hand this'll be a trickly bird to prove beyond all doubt; it certainly isn't hard in a quick search of eBird images to find photographs from Europe of bills that look surprisingly long and slender rather than the expected shout and stout - here are three random ones we've just lifted, with the bottom one in particular looking really striking (it's from ebird checklist S51252590 from a place in coastal northern Spain so it's probably a vagrant Holboell's Grebe as well!)
