First off, a Happy Birthday to ourselves - we're almost up to OAP vintage: today's the 64th anniversary of the official opening of PBO at its current base at the Old Lower Lighthouse...
...fortunately, not a great deal ever changes here and the Peter Scott painting is still in situ today more or less right where it was when the great man packed his brushes away:
Back to the present and the Meadow Pipit avalanche continued unabated: today's bright sunshine and very stiff easterly were perfect conditions for passage along West Cliffs, where sample counts included an early/mid-morning total of 400 in an hour at Reap Lane and a later morning total of 785 in two hours at Wallsend; with plenty of birds on the move at other times the day total must have been well in excess of 2000. The year's first Swallow also passed through at Reap Lane, whilst other movers included a trickle of Wood Pigeons, alba wagtails (including a few certain Whites), Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Linnets. Nocturnal migrants either passed straight through without stopping or weren't moving in the first place, since the likes of Wheatears and Chiffchaffs were still only really thinly spread on the ground; a few of the diurnal movers that dropped in included 2 White Wagtails at Reap Lane. The sea was still very quiet, with no more than 22 Common Scoter and a lone Red-throated Diver through off the Bill.
One of the grounded White Wagtails at Reap Lane © Pete Saunders:
There are a lot worse ways of whiling away a couple of hours than vismigging in the sunshine high up on West Cliffs with Meadow Pipits streaming past just metres away at eye level or below © Martin Cade:
