Whilst an overnight downpour had mostly ceased before dawn broke, the persistent buffeting wind continued to make birding hard work, with lingering singles of Firecrest and Pied Flycatcher the only grounded migrants of note at the Bill. The sea was certainly not as busy as hoped, with 190 Kittiwakes providing the bulk of the numbers off the Bill; 16 Sandwich Terns, 3 Balearic Shearwaters and 2 Arctic Skuas the only other sightings of note. Four Knot, 2 Sanderling and a single Bar-tailed Godwit provided some variety amongst the routine waders at Ferrybridge.
A welcome sight in the last few weeks has been the return of the gull flock that congregates in the fields below Culverwell; not only is this great for attracting scarcities like yesterday's Caspian Gull, but it also permits opportunities for scrutinizing for colour-ringed individuals. The fields have proved a major draw for locally-bred birds from the Harbour breakwaters but also attract birds from further afield, with French Great Black-backed Gulls in particular making repeat visits from one year to the next; just recently, these have including one individual first logged here over 15 years ago. One of the most interesting records so far this autumn concerns a Norwegian-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull seen here twice this week; this had previously also been resighted on its wintering grounds in Mauritania - some 4600km away from where it was originally ringed and easily the furthest south that any colour-ringed gull sighted here has been recorded © Martin Cade:
And talking of ringing recoveries, we've got a bit of a thing going with Skokholm Bird Observatory at the moment. Last month there was the spectacular one day movement of a Storm Petrel from Portland to Skokholm: it had been ringed here at 02.15 one night and at 03:00 the next night it was recaptured on Skokholm. If that wasn't enough, today we received notification of a Willow Warbler from a few days ago doing more or less the same thing but in the opposite direction: it had been ringed at Skokholm at 18:10 in the evening and was recaptured in the Crown Estate Field at 13.55 the next afternoon. We'd been gripped by the news of Skokholm having a really good fall of Willow Warblers on the day the bird was ringed and when handling it here had actually joked that the ring looked so shiny and new that it must have been put on the day before at Skokholm - amazingly, it actually had! © Martin Cade:
