After dying back considerably overnight, it was a tad frustrating to awake to another blustery morning with the birding much the same as in recent days; the wind did abate considerably as the day went on but this amelioration came too late to do us many favours. Around the Bill, Yellow Wagtails, Wheatears and Willow Warblers reached 25 apiece, with 2 Grasshopper Warblers and a Spotted Flycatcher also logged, whilst up-island saw a mini arrival of Pied Flycatchers with 4 scattered around the Southwell/ Weston area. A Little Stint was the highlight among the Ferrybridge selection that also included 2 Redshank, a Knot and a Little Tern.
The Ferrybridge Little Stint showed very nicely © Martin Cade...
...although, as autumn adult Little Stints at Ferrybridge always do, it instantly brought to mind perhaps our most savage ever Portland dip - Paul Baker's fabulous adult Red-necked Stint there on 27th August 2010 © Paul Baker:
As expected as August advances, Yellow Wagtails are showing up in increasing numbers - these two were at Ferrybridge this morning © Pete Saunders:
We've never been under the slightest illusion that the vast majority of the current crop of migrants in the moth-traps haven't come much further than a few hundred metres from the Obs garden but it was nice to today get indisputable proof that at least some of the Small Marbleds have bred successfully in the vicinity. On 23rd July Jodie scouted around some of patches of Fleabane in the adjacent beach hut field and quickly found a flower head that exhibited what we took to be the characteristic larval feeding signs of a damaged flower head from which the grub-like caterpillar would occasionally show itself. Because of the possibility of confusion with the apparently similar feeding signs/caterpillar of the pyralid, Lesser Clouded Knot-horn Phycitodes saxicola, we hung on to the caterpillar and kept it provisioned with new flower heads as each old one dried out. Today, a Small Marbled duly emerged via an exit hole in a flower head - we have read that on at least some occasions caterpillars have pupated in a spinning on the outside of a flower head, but that wasn't the case for us and pupation occurred inside the flower head © Jodie Henderson (early stages) and Martin Cade (adult):
