31st October

We tend to be a bit gripey about samey weather conditions but the current run of gentle northeasterlies and heavily overcast skies are welcome to stick around - not only do they make for pleasurable birding but there are plenty of migrants to get amongst as well. Today's chief rewards were Hawfinches over Blacknor and at the Obs, and new Yellow-browed Warblers at the Mermaid and Pennsylvania Castle; they arrived in tandem with, amongst others, another small flurry of new Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs and crests, a late Reed Warbler and a steady if unspectacular trickle of thrushes. Singles of Short-eared Owl, Yellowhammer and Corn Bunting at the Bill were very much appropriate for the season, as were the scatter of Black Redstarts everywhere; also elsewhere, several Firecrests and singles of Great Spotted Woodpecker and Cetti's Warbler were at Wakeham/Pennsylvania Castle, the Red-necked Grebe continued in Portland Harbour, a Lapwing was grounded beside the Beach Road and singles of Grey Plover and Knot were at Ferrybridge. Overhead, a huge early flock of c10000 Wood Pigeons over the middle of the island looked like being the vanguard of another big movement but ultimately things fizzled out, with the Bill total for the morning falling just short of 12000; Chaffinches trickled over all morning but most other seasonable movers were in short-ish supply.

Bearing in mind the numbers being logged elsewhere we'd been feeling a little hard done by on the Hawfinch front; however, there's nothing like then getting to scrutinize the finer detail on an adult male to help cast that fretting aside - such cool birds with so much going on in their plumage! © Martin Cade: 

Talking of soothing potential stress, it's also great when someone who reports a Reed Warbler on 31st October immediately produces a perfectly ID-able photo of it instead of coming to us with some sort of crappy, doors of perception verbal description of what they thought they were seeing or wanted to see through binoculars © Dan Law:

Dan's Reed Warbler was in Helen's Fields that, as can be gauged from the vegetation it's in, are in a fantastic state at the moment. We lead a very sheltered life these days being more or less rooted to looking after the Obs and manning the Crown Estate Field nets for a large chunk of the day. However, since there was so little coverage of the wider Bill area, this week we've had a few afternoon wanders that have taken in Helen's Fields that we hadn't visited for literally months and we were taken aback at how good the mid-tier stewardship scheme crops there look - full of all sorts of waist-deep, bird-friendly cover and full of birds; these fields are much more sheltered that the windswept Crown Estate Field that we're used to and the crops there are correspondingly far more luxuriant. Here are a few random photos of the progression of this year's crops from sowing in spring through to how they look this week - you might be grumpy at the Government for having taken away your winter fuel allowance but at least give them some credit for coughing up for crops that could so have a Black-faced Bunting in any day now © Jodie Henderson & Martin Cade: