30th August

August's going out very differently to how most of it had ticked along - gone is the warmth, sunshine and settled conditions of the bulk of the month, to be replaced by increasing wind, quantities of rain and, by this afternoon at least, the dank greyness of winter. The strength of the wind didn't deter a few passerine migrants from showing up, with 6 Tree Pipits, 4 Grey Wagtails, 3 Sedge Warblers, a Grasshopper Warbler and a lingering Firecrest amongst the loggings at the Bill. Some early sea movement included 29 Balearic Shearwaters and 6 Arctic Skuas through off the Bill but thereafter the deterioration in the weather brought forth a variety of reports from different watchpoints that included c90 Manx Shearwaters, 57 more Balearic Shearwaters and a Sabine's Gull amongst others - more on those when we find out more about them.

Amongst various things we struggle with - juvenile large gulls spring straight to mind - lone, settled juvenile terns often give us problems so it was nice to encounter both Common and Arctic together at Ferrybridge in the increasing gloom of this evening. It was a shame we couldn't capture all three individuals fully in the open because the really short legs of two of them led us to immediate suspect they were Arctics even if we were struggling to see any really compelling plumage differences in the shoddy conditions - the presumed Common had a stronger dark bar on the closed wing and what looked to be a slightly different head pattern but beyond that we weren't making much progress. Fortunately all three soon took to the air where their characteristic upper and underwing patterns confirmed that they really were two Arctics and a Common © Martin Cade:

Seems to have been an overnight fall of Convolvulus Hawks - 10 from the moth-traps in the Obs garden + 3 Striped Hawks. Fantastic!

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— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 9:55 AM

Considering it was such a blustery night the Obs moth-traps were pretty busy with an obvious arrival of other more routine migrants. Elsewhere on the island another Convolvulus Hawk for John Lucas at Southwell

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— Portland Bird Observatory (@portlandbirdobs.bsky.social) August 30, 2025 at 10:14 AM