Whilst it was always going to be a challenge to live up to the excesses of yesterday's birding, it was nevertheless another pleasant morning, with a steady and varied throughput of birds during the first few hours of the day before the onset of some fairly substantial rain saw things unfortunately come to a rather abrupt end before the middle of the afternoon. Goldcrests and the like were clearly arriving in quite a different manner to yesterday, with a dawn fall being replaced by a steady arrival in off the sea throughout the morning; numbers were lower than yesterday, but Chiffchaffs were more of a feature and a new Cetti's Warbler figured amongst the arrivals; further variety on the ground was provided by the continuing Snow Bunting on East Cliffs and Yellow-browed Warbler at Wakeham. The presence of rain in the Channel seemingly scuppered a good many of the morning's overhead migrants intentions to depart, with a stronger passage of many over New Ground than was apparent at the Bill; cumulatively, minima of 4750 Wood Pigeons, 755 Starlings, 345 Goldfinches, 305 Stock Doves, 135 Chaffinches, 70 Skylarks, 32 Bramblings, a Lapwing, a Ring Ouzel and an additional Snow Bunting were among the totals logged. Some wildfowl movement offshore included 4 Brent Geese, 3 Pintail and a Pochard through off the Bill, whilst another duck worth a mention (18 months ago it was mooted as a likely unassisted arrival but it's utterly overstayed its welcome!) was the long-staying Mandarin that was noticed on the ornamental duck pool at Southwell for the first time in several months.
...We made a tentative enquiry to the guys at the MOD Dstl Stone-curlew Conservation Project wondering if it might be one of their birds and had an instant response confirming that indeed it was: it had been ringed as a nestling at Porton Down, Wiltshire, on 24th August 2021. Very nice!
Weather enforced early curtailment of ringing activities today but not before another pretty fair arrival of late migrants was tapped into at the Bill: total of 41 included 12 Goldcrests and 6 Chiffchaffs + the sixth Cetti's Warbler of the autumn and the first Black Redstart of the year
