30th October

The quiet, gloomy conditions continued and late migration ticked along steadily if largely unspectacularly. Another heavy overnight passage of Redwings presaged some further movement throughout the daylight hours when 100 more dribbled through at the Bill and 40 grounded at Verne Common; other thrushes included 16 Fieldfares through at Verne Common and a sprinkle of new Blackbirds and Song Thrushes. A small flurry of warblers and crests included 3 Goldrests, 2 Chiffchaffs, a Blackcap, a Yellow-browed Warbler and a Firecrest new at the Bill and another Yellow-browed Warbler at Southwell; other newcomers at the Bill included a single Wheatear. Lingerers on the ground included a spread of Black Redstarts everywhere. A single flock of 80 Siskins through over the Bill was a strange event in a poor autumn for them and, along with the first Snow Bunting of the year there, was the overhead highlight; other passage was quite subdued under the overcast sky, with 2050 Wood Pigeons, 9 Bramblings, 3 Swallows, 2 Redpolls and a Golden Plover the best at the Bill. The Red-necked Grebe remained in Portland Harbour, whilst the sea the came up with 150 Mediterranean Gulls lingering off the Bill and 8 Brent Geese, 3 Balearic Shearwaters and 2 Tufted Ducks through there. Finally, singles of Sanderling and Knot were at Ferrybridge.

On the ringing front, today's Yellow-browed was the 11th trapped this month which beats our previous record year total of 10 in 2016...

...another record that's been broken - largely due to serendipitous, untargeted catching in the Crown Estate Field this month - is that for Stonechat: the total of 72 ringed so far this year already comfortably exceeds the previous record of 64 in 2017 © Martin Cade:

The fly-over - unseen - Snow Bunting at the Bill this morning was a nice example of the reach of the recording kit that we often leave running at the Obs just for eventualities like this. Our hearing isn't too bad but to our ears this bird sounded high up and really quite distant - in fact it wasn't even picked up by someone else with even sharper hearing who was on the patio at the time - but the recording makes it sound as though it was quite low overhead! These days, we don't hear Lapland or Snow Buntings nearly often enough to be certain of their differentiation so thanks to Joe for sorting it out for us:

If there'd been even a shaft of brightness through today's leaden sky then this photo might have had a tad more colour about it. As it is, we're guessing that there can't have been many occasions in Britain when it's been possible to pose two wild-caught Silver-striped Hawks next to one another - last night's specimen is the slightly smaller, more worn one on the left; the bigger, brighter one on the right is from the night before © Martin Cade: