Today's blasting easterly may have made for challenging conditions in the field but there were plenty of rewards to be had from the various watchpoints around the island. At sea,
Common Scoters were once again on the move in big numbers, with 603 through off the Bill, alongside 50
Sandwich Terns, 6
Shelduck, 2
Garganey, 2
Arctic Skua, 2
Greylag Geese, 2
Common Terns and an
Arctic Tern. The Greylags and Garganey had also earlier been seen passing Chesil, where additional sightings through the day included 44
Black-headed Gulls, 22
Shoveler, 2
Whimbrel and singles of
Curlew,
Sanderling,
Grey Plover and
Dunlin. Another strong diurnal passage saw small flocks of pipits and finches arriving at a fairly constant rate well into the early afternoon, with a total of 990
Meadow Pipits, 368
Linnets and 51
Goldfinches logged during a three hour sample count on West Cliffs; other variety on the move included the first 2
Tree Pipits of the spring, 2
Fieldfare and 2
Song Thrush;
hirundines, however, were noticeably quieter than yesterday with neither
Swallow nor
Sand Martin making it to 50 at the Bill. On the shore, a noticeable uptick in waders included 60
Dunlin and a
Sanderling at Ferrybridge.
It was another Common Scoter day over the sea, although there were other snippets of interest to be tapped into including Greylag Geese and Arctic Skuas © Martin Cade (scoters and Arctic Skua) and Keith Pritchard (Greylag Geese):
Sadly, by evening the light was shocking so it was fortunate that Shovelers are pretty distinctive even when completely silhouetted against the setting sun © Martin Cade:
