29th April

Since all but two of the observers out and about around the island today failed to spot an enormous white and black bird flying majestically and blindingly obviously through island airspace this morning we're not sure we should take as a given that they'd have uncovered whatever songbird vagrant might have been lurking less obtrusively; the White Stork that so deftly escaped wider scrutiny progressed north from Southwell before leaving across Portland Harbour and provided the day's highpoint. Vision impairments aside, it certainly looked to remain quiet for routine migration which came as no surprise bearing in mind the unchanged conditions, with Wheatear again taking top spot amongst the grounded arrivals that included another Short-eared Owl but little else that wouldn't have been expected. Diurnal passage was also again noticeably lighter than anticipated, with a single Hobby the best of it at the Bill. In a fresher northeasterly sea passage picked up a little, with 105 Common Scoter, 4 Arctic Skuas and singles of Pomarine Skua and Red-throated and Great Northern Diver through off the Bill and 15 Turnstones, 10 Knot, 8 Shoveler and 3 Arctic Skuas through from Chesil.

It's amazing how quickly you can get benefits from the provision of decent habitat. Today saw our fields that are managed under a Countryside Stewardship deal ploughed in preparation for this year's crops to be planted and in no time at all multiples of, amongst others, Whinchat, Yellow Wagtail and White Wagtail had appeared feeding voraciously over the freshly broken ground - since none were known to be anywhere in the vicinity when the work started we can only guess that they were overflying migrants lured down opportunistically © Martin Cade: